


Extra Credit

by wononetoo



Category: IT (2017)
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Smut, M/M, Richie is kind of an idiot, Teacher-Student Relationship, but like not that big of one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-02-12 03:32:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 43,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12950400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wononetoo/pseuds/wononetoo
Summary: Richie loves everything about being a teacher. He only has one problem with it, and its name is Eddie Kaspbrak.Or. The teacher AU no one asked for.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> before I get any hate for this, It is in a college setting where the age difference is around 7 year and both are over the legal age.

Richie parked his old truck in his parking spot and flicked the ash off of the end of his cigarette out the window. He brought it back to his lips and leaned back against the headrest of his seat. Looking down at the clock he inhaled the smoke.

9:20 AM

He still had ten minutes before the start of class, he thought as he reached into the back seat to grab his messenger bag. Stan had tried to convince him to get a briefcase to look somewhat professional. Richie and Bev had both laughed at the thought of Richie parading around campus looking like one of the stuck up professors.

Richie definitely wasn’t one of those. He was the teacher that walked into class on the first day and could blend in with the students if he really wanted to.

Getting a teaching position right out of school was rare but thanks to the glowing recommendation letters that his advisors and Dean had written for him, it hadn’t been too hard.

Say what you want about Richie’s personality but he was a fantastic teacher.

The school board had watched him closely during his first year and were blown away by how well he took to the environment. His class had quickly became one of the more signed up for classes and he made sure that all of his students excelled.

The school didn’t hesitate to sign him on permanently after that first year.

Richie grabbed his coffee from the console and swung his door open, bumping it shut with his side once he was out.

His walk to the Fine Arts building was full of smiles and “Morning Mr Tozier.” He waved to each of them, occasionally calling something back to the students he knew.

Right as he was pulling the door to the building open a slender arm wrapped around his waist from behind him while another hand held a bagel in front of his face.

His eyes dropped down to the nails of the offender as he bit into the bagel and pulled it out of their hand. They were painted with every colour of the rainbow with bright neon paint. He only knew one person who pulled off something that matched his taste so exactly.

“Well, Ms Marsh, I really hope you didn’t just want to show me your breakfast because this bagel now belongs to me.” He stated as he bit out a large chunk and turned his head to look down at her.

“I’m all for sharing.” Bev said grabbing his wrist and pulling the bagel down to her mouth to take a bite. Keeping her arm around his waist she moved to walk beside him.

Beverly Marsh was one of Richie’s favourite parts of the school. She was a couple years older than him and one of the best artist he had ever met, as well as being one of the best people he had ever met. The two instantly clicked at the first department meeting during his first year and had basically been inseparable ever since.

“Are we still on for tonight.” She asked as they approached the door to Richie’s class, snatching Richie’s coffee and taking a sip.

“I’m never the one you have to convince to go out on Friday nights, Bev.” He replied, taking another large bite of bagel and grabbing his coffee back from her mouth.

She nodded as she turned to walk away.

“I’ll work on him. you need to add milk or something to that. It’s disgusting.” She called over her shoulder.

“It’s dark like my soul.” He yelled back as he watched her turn the corner laughing. He smiled after her and used his arm to pull open the door to his classroom.

The class was already full, most students talking among themselves. A few closer to the door had turned to listen to him and Beverly talking just outside.

Richie nodded and waved as he crossed the front of the room towards his desk. A few of the students responded with small smiles. He turned to look forward at his desk before he got halfway across the room, avoiding a certain set of eye’s that followed him as he walked.

As he sat at his desk he made the mistake of looking back into the crowd of students. As soon as he did his eyes were drawn to the front row, specifically to the student that sat directly in the center.

His name of Eddie Kaspbrak and Richie was pretty sure he had only taken the class to torture him.

As their eye’s met Richie saw the corner of Eddie’s lip rise into a smirk, his head tilting to the side as his tongue darted out to lick his bottom lip.

Student crushes were nothing new to Richie. In fact, he started making a bet with Bev that a least one student in every one of his classes would develop one. So yeah he was pretty used to them.

Something about Eddie was completely different.

Most of the time they were wide-eyed freshmen who would turn away blushing as soon as Richie would look their way. Or they would say hi to him in the hallways and turn away giggling when he returned the greeting. Or stare at him dreamily while he taught at the front of the room.

Eddie did none of those things.

He would deliberately make eye contact whenever he could, and as soon as they would he would raise his eyebrow, almost like he was challenging Richie not to look away.

And most of the time, Richie didn’t want to.

Something about Eddie drew Richie to him. He had the deepest brown eyes and matching hair that was always perfectly in place. Honestly, that was a pretty good word to describe Eddie as a whole. Perfect. Everything from how he was always on time to class, to his basically perfect grades, to the soft sweaters he always wore and the shorts that most would consider too short but Richie couldn’t help but appreciate. Especially the way they showed off his-

 _No Richie. Bad._ A voice that sounded uncannily like Stan’s rang through his head.

Richie shook his head, breaking the spell that always overtook him whenever he found himself staring at the younger boy and cleared his throat, standing as he addressed the class.

“Mornin’. Everyone get into your groups; you all know the drill.” He turned towards the computer on his desk and powered it on, while the students shuffled around and rearranged desks.

Friday’s were Richie’s favourite day for a few reasons.

Number one – weekends were awesome, duh.

Number two – Fridays were basically the only day that there was a chance that Stan would come out with him and Bev. Richie and Stan had been best friends since they were young, despite the three-year age difference and Richie loved him like a brother but he could be a pretty big stick in the mud sometimes.

And thirdly – he only taught three classes on Friday and all three of those were discussions classes where the students would get into groups and discuss the short film that they would watch the class before.

Not that Richie minded talking at the front of the class for nearly two hours. 

His mom had always said he had a gift for talking for long periods of time without shutting up. but with the discussion class, he found that that was when the students, as well as himself, learned the most. Students that would normally never talk bouncing idea’s and thoughts off of each other was one of Richie’s favourite things about teaching Film Studies.

He turned on the projector that was connected to his computer and walked to the front of the class as the sounds of moving students started to settle.

He reached up to pull the cord attached to the projector screen down as the projector blinked on. Turning to face the class he pointedly avoided looking at the front row as the discussion questions appeared behind him.

“For today, I want each of you to individually take notes on what your group talks about and hand them in at the end of class.” Richie shifted his eye’s around the room at the general look of displeasure that erupted on the faces of his students.

“I know it sucks, you can’t just rely on one person to do all the work today.” Richie pouted his lip exaggeratedly and saw some of the looks turn to half smiles.

“I just wanna try something different today. hell, I might not even like all the extra reading I just gave myself and scrap the idea after today.” Richie knew that wasn’t true. He loved reading the opinions of his students. it was amazing how many different versions of a main idea the students could come up with from a short film that one of Bev’s friends made about Apples.

“Now, let the discussions begin.” He threw his arms out exaggeratedly and yell like he was at some kind of car race. A couple of students let out small laughs and the majority had lost the displeased look in favour of smiles or the occasional eye roll.

As the groups started their discussions, Richie walked back to his desk and grabbed his half drank coffee and headed towards the back of the class to listen in on one of the groups.

He slowly moved from group to group, aware of the gaze that followed him as he made his way to the front.

He took a deep breath before heading towards the group closest to the front. He stood behind one of the students,  _something Denbrough_ , he thought as he listened to what one of the girls in the group as saying about plot points, trying his hardest to ignore the look currently being burned into the side of his face.

He made a few comments and the group turned to listen to him and a few scribbled down some notes. He went to leave the group as another one of the students took the lead and the rest shifted to look at them, all but one.

He stopped just past Eddie’s seat and dropped the volume of his voice.

“Shouldn’t you be paying attention Mr Kaspbrak.” He raised his eyebrow as he looked down and the two meet eyes for the first time since the begin on class.

“Sorry Professor Tozier, something just caught my eye.” He smiled up at him and pushed his paper more into Richie’s view. “Don’t worry, I still have plenty of notes for you.”

Richie’s eyes moved from Eddie’s to look at the page and it was full of impressively neat handwriting, which Richie honestly had no clue when he had found the time to write them through all the staring that he had been doing all class.

Richie nodded slowly without saying anything else and walked towards his desk, his mouth pressed into a thin line. He looked up at the clock above the door when he reached his desk. There were five minutes until the end of class and Richie decided to call it.

“Okay, so I want everyone to drop off their papers on my desk and then you can get out here. Have a good weekend.” He smiled and sat down, shifting around some of the papers already on the desk to make room.

By the time the clock read 11 Richie had a small stack of paper on the corner of his desk and only two students remained in the class. the Denbrough kid and of course, Eddie.

They were talking as they approached Richie’s desk. Bill, Richie was pretty sure that was his name, put his page down and continued talking, briefly smiling and waving at Richie as he turned towards the door.

Eddie stood in front of the desk for a few seconds more than strictly necessary. He smiled down at Richie as he carefully placed his page on top of Bill’s.

“Have a good weekend Professor.”  Eddie said in a low voice, his eyes dropping down from Richie’s eyes to his lips before turning and running after Bill, who hadn’t noticed Eddie wasn’t still right beside him.

Richie sighed and rubbed the side of his face, shifting in his seat and looking down at the pages.

Eddie’s writing really was something. He grabbed the paper and glanced over some of the things he had written. His eyes fell to the bottom of the page where a little note was written inside of a box.

‘Sorry about being distracted Sir. If you want me to come back after hours to make up for it, I’d be happy to.’

“Good lord.” Richie muttered to himself and swallowing a lump in his throat as he grabbed the rest of the papers, stuffed them into his bag and stood. He headed out of the room and down the hall towards the Visual Arts section of the building. He needed someone to remind him why sleeping with students was a bad idea because he was starting to forget.

And he knew exactly who to go to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Richie Remember the first day of classes.

As it turned out, Bev was the absolute worst person to go to.

Richie had marched right into her office after his first class, not even bothering to knock and threw himself dramatically on to the small couch in the corner of the room.

Bev, who was all too used to Richie’s antics, barely looked up from her laptop as Richie stormed in and began ranting about one of his students.

Richie finished explaining why this Kaspbrak kid was going to be the death of him and frantically waved a page filled with neat loopy handwriting, in front of her face. She took the page from him and grazed over it, stopping to read the small note at the bottom.

She sighed before reaching up and closing her laptop, turning to fully face him now.

“Is he legal?” Bev asked, her lip turning upwards at the corner at the look Richie was giving her. He had stood from the couch and was gaping open-mouthed at her, his eyebrows raised above the rims of his glasses.

“Bev that is not what I need to be thinking about right now, he is by the way, but I need someone to tell me this is a bad idea not encourage it.” Richie rambled as he paced in front of her desk.

“No, if you wanted someone to tell you that, you would have gone to Stan. But you didn’t. you came to me.” Her head moved as he continued to walk back in forth in front of her, leaning forward to rest her chin on her hand.

“I CAN’T TELL STAN. HE WOULD KILL ME.” Richie yelled throwing his hand in the air for added emphasis.

As much as he hated to admit it, she was completely right. Stan was definitely the metaphorical ‘angel’ of their little group, At least compare to Bev. If he really wanted “responsible” advice he would have gone to him, told him what was going on, listen to the twenty-minute lecture he would get and then do whatever Stan told him to do about the situation. But honestly, he knew deep down that that wasn’t was he wanted.  

“Stan wouldn’t kill you. he’d give you an earful, but he wouldn’t kill you. Besides it’s not like you’re actually planning on doing anything with him.” she finished with a small laugh that quickly died when she saw the way Richie sheepishly look down at the floor.

He stopped pacing and slumped down on the couch again, running his hand over his face.

“I’m a terrible person.” He muttered into his palm. Bev stood from her chair and rounded her desk, lightly sitting next to him and wrapping her arm around his shoulder.

“No, you’re not. Anyways you said he was legal, so I don’t even really see that big of a problem with it. And he’s obviously really into you. I say go for it!” she smiled when he looked over at her.

“Bev you’re not supposed to sleep with students, that’s like, the first thing they tell you.”

“Yeah, but it still happens all the time.”

“But-“

“No, we are not spending our lunch break whining in my office. There’s a change of plans if you just came here to bitch. You’re taking me out for something to eat, let’s go.” Bev stood from the couch and pulled Richie up with her. He willingly let himself be pulled up and laughed when she pulled her bight polka dot jacket on and stood waiting by the door.

~~~

Richie took her to a diner nearby that they both really liked and with some convincing, gave a very detailed description of Eddie and went more in depth then he had in the quick rant early about what was going on.

~~~

The beginning of the semester had been as normal as the last two. The number of students taking Film Studies had doubled over the two years since Richie had taken over from the 70-year-old dinosaur that had been teaching it previously and Richie took a lot of pride in that, frequently bragged about it to Stan.

He started the first class how he had the year before. Sitting among the rows of students as the beginning of class rolled around. It was something he had done the year before in an attempt to maybe get to know a few of his students without the authority pretense. It had worked well the first time so what could possibly go wrong this time?

The students had started to talk with each other about 5 minutes after the class was supposed to start.

Most asking if maybe the Prof had messed up the date and time, a few random conversations were muttered around the room, but Richie leaned forward to listen to the one going on in front of him.

Two girls were sitting close together in the front row talking fairly quiet.

“I heard the prof’s really young.” one of them whispers enthusiastically.

“I heard he’s really hot.” the other replied, raising in her seat, looking towards the little window in the door.

The boy sitting beside them scoffed and turned from the girls towards the boy on his other side. Richie couldn’t see his face and by the way his head moved he assumed he was rolling his eye’s.

“Have you ever had a teacher that was actually hot and not just ‘teacher hot’.” the boy said in a voice so low Richie had to lean forward a little more to hear him.

“’Te-teacher hot’?“ the boy beside him laughed with a slight stutter. He was taller, with medium auburn hair. The one sitting right in front of Richie leaned further away from the two girls and fully turned to face the taller one.

Richie could make out his profile and geez it was a nice one. He had lightly tanned skin and a dust of freckles that ran across his nose, which crinkled slightly when he joined the other boy in laughter.

“You know, like hot for a teacher but on a larger scale, not really that hot.” Freckles said, louder than before.

“I don’t know, that psy-psychology teacher we had last ye-year was quite a looker.”  

Richie let out a small laugh. He knew exactly which teacher they were talking about. She was a 50-year-old who looked like she had come right out a Tim Burton movie. Normally Richie would have been all about that but this particular lady happened to be one of the biggest bitches Richie had ever met.

The two turned at the sound of Richie’s laugh with raised eyebrows.

The side profile of Freckles didn’t do the front justice. His dark brown eye’s were striking against his youngish looking features. He raised his eyebrow further as he looked Richie over, almost like he was analyzing him.

“Come on, That’s hardly fair. You can’t compare every teacher to Ms. Monroe.” Richie smirked down at Freckles as the taller one laughed. “I’m sure there’s a few good looking teachers somewhere.” He finished, cocking up his eyebrow and leaning forward on his hands.

Freckles scooted his chair back slightly, resting his arm a few inches away from Richie’s and looking him up and down, a lot slower this time. From the corner of his eye, Richie saw the taller boy let out a little laugh and turn around to face the front of the room.

“I’m sure there is somewhere. But I’m more sure that there’s better-looking students even closer.” He leaned closer to Richie and looked up at him from under his long eyelashes, whispering the last part.

Richie’s eyes widened as he cleared his throat and pushed his seat away from the table in front of him. that had escalated a lot quicker then he had thought it would. Panicking slightly, he stood from his seat and cleared his throat even louder.

“I think it’s about time we got class started, don’t you guys.” Richie walked to the front of the class and picked up a dry erase marker, using it to messily write his name on the whiteboard.

“I’m Mr. Tozier, and welcome to Film Studies.”

Richie took a minute to take in the expressions of the students. Focusing especially on the front row.

The two girls that had been talking in the front were staring at each other, mouth open and faces bright red. The tall boy had looked extremely shocked and then he dropped his face into his arm, and Richie could hear a faint muffled laughing.

Freckles had watched him walk to the front of the room, brow furrowed and lips apart slightly in confusion. When Richie and him made eye contact, Richie offered a sympatric smile and expected him to maybe blush or stutter or do something that hinted that he was even somewhat embarrassed to have been blatantly flirting with his prof. 

He was definitely not expecting the look he got.

The boy’s mouth closed and sprouted into a small smirk. He looked almost like he was accepting a challenge. Richie didn’t give himself enough time to analyze the look. Insisting on getting the class started, he broke eye contact and reached over to his desk and grabbed the syllabus to hand out.

~~~

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. so you started it?” Bev asked enthusiastically. She had been excitedly listening to Richie’s story while they shared a milkshake in the old style diner.

“I did not! I was joking around!” Richie defended, pulling the milkshake closer to him to take a long sip.

“well, obviously he didn’t take it that way.”

“Yeah obviously.”

~~~

Over the next couple of weeks, Richie learned just how serious Eddie was about completing challenges, even ones that he gave himself.  

The first class he had done nothing but stare at Richie. Which wouldn’t have been that weird considering he was technically supposed to be paying attention to Richie but something about the way his eye’s lingered was definitely different from the rest of the students.

The class ended and Richie noticed the way freckles waited until they had locked eyes before standing and heading for the door, putting way more sway in his hips then necessary. It was also the first time Richie had noticed the shorts™. They were way shorter then Richie had ever seen on a university-aged boy, and he couldn’t take his eye’s off of them.

His eyes did snap up when he saw that the ridiculously exaggerated sway had stopped at the door and Freckles was looking over his shoulder at Richie with one of the most mischievous looks Richie had ever seen.

As soon as all of the students had left the room Richie immediately opened his laptop and went through his student roster. He found out his name was Edward Kaspbrak and he was basically a straight A student.

~~~

“So you stalked him?” Bev asked as she waited at the door to the diner for Richie to catch up to her.

“I did not! I just wanted a name to put to the-“

“Ass?” Bev interrupted, pulling the passenger door open of Richie’s truck.

“Face” Richie finished shaking his head as he joined her in the car. “You know, I think it’s you’re fault I’m so fucked up. you’re a bad influence.

“Oh please, Stan’s told me stories from when you guys were younger, you didn’t need any help being fucked up.”

Richie flipped her off as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“Okay, so this kid stares at you and makes flirty eye’s and wears slightly inappropriate length shorts. That’s what I’m getting so far. I’m pretty positive students have done that to you before.” Bev lolled her head to the side as she reached into the console and pulled out a half-empty pack of cigarettes and lit one.

“It’s more than that. And please stop calling him a kid. It’s weird enough already.” Richie stretched out and took the cigarette from her fingers as she blew smoke out of the window. “He’s relentless. He’s always biting his lips or sucking on the end of pens or leaving notes on the assignments he hands in. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

“Well, maybe you should try talking to him? Also, you’re showing me those other notes this weekend.” Bev laughed as Richie shook his head.

Richie agreed with hum and reached up to turn the radio up.

“Oh, and I talked to Stan this morning and he said he’s down for going out tonight. Maybe that will be a good time you tell him about your little student crush.” Bev laughed again as he put her hand on top of Richie’s and turned the music even louder.

The noise Richie made to that was a lot less agreeable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So some notes. there’s a reference in here from Sweeny Todd, in case you were wondering what Richie was talking about with the “Ms. Monroe” thing.


	3. Chapter 3

The rest of Riche’s classes that day seemed to speed right on by, as much as he didn’t want them to. He usually loved Fridays, and he was always excited to hang out with Stan, but the thought of having to explain the Eddie situation to him was really putting a damper on the day.

Honestly, it wasn’t like Richie had done anything he should be ashamed of. He hadn’t actually done anything. Had he thought of doing things? Perhaps. But Stan really couldn’t get mad at him for that, could he?

As much as Richie was not looking forward to talking to Stan tonight, the thought of Monday morning was somehow stressing him out even more. Bev’s advice was something to be taken with a grain of salt, but one thing she said was definitely true, and that was that Richie really needed to sit Eddie down and talk with him.

So he decided it was best to just get it over with and do it as soon as he could.

When five o’ clock rolled around and the students from his last class filed out of the room, Richie stalled at his desk for a few minutes. He turned off the lights and pulled the door shut. On his way out to his truck he made a quick stop at his office, dropping off the projects from the students and shuffling through some older piles of papers. He came across a few of the various assignments Eddie had handed in and stowed them in his bag, then he headed towards the teacher parking lot.

Bev was already there, leaning against the hood. She nodded when she saw him pushing the Art Building front open.

“Finally. Geez I was about to start walking.” Bev joked as Richie unlocked the truck and she pulled the passenger seat door open.

Richie climbed into his seat and started the car. Before he pulled out of the spot he dropped the small stack of papers into Bev’s lap. She looked over at him confused as she picked up the top page and realized what they were.

She laughed as she read the note scribbled along the margarine of the page out loud.

‘Is there a science classroom nearby? Cause it looks to me like we’ve got chemistry’

“That’s pretty cheesy, this is what has you so worked up.” Bev laughed again as she flipped through the papers.

“Keep reading.” Richie turned out of the parking lot and headed down the street. Bev pulled a random one from the middle and snorted before she read it for Richie.

‘Professor, I noticed you have quite the hard workload recently. I’d be happy to give you a hand’

“This one just seems like he’s concerned about his teacher.” Bev hid her smile behind the page. Richie raised his eyebrow at her and pulled up to a red light. He reached over and looked through them until he found the one he was looking for and place it on top.

‘Mr.T, I’m sorry for disrupting your class today. Maybe I should come in at lunch for some kind of punishment’

Bev threw her hand over her mouth but it didn’t really do anything to block the giggles escaping her mouth.

“Well he’s persistent, I’ll give him that. Do all of these have notes?” Bev asked as she skimmed through the stack again.

“Yep, Every single one, basically since the first day of classes.”

“Hmm. Well, like I said earlier, you should definitely talk with him.” She said as she read through a few more of the pages to herself, giggling at a few.

“You really think I should have him stay after class, just the two of us, alone in a room?”

“Unless you want to have the conversation in front of the whole class? Look what you need to do is try to come off as more of a teacher figure. Try dressing more like the boring strict teachers, maybe that will put him off. Sit him down and say ‘this is inappropriate.’” Bev had turned to face him during her speech, she seemed to actually be taking him seriously.

“And if he doesn’t listen you can always punish him.” She continued in her serious tone and held a straight face for about 3 seconds before she burst out laughing.

“Yeah, yeah, yuck it up asshole.” Richie rolled his eyes as he pulled into the parking lot of  _The Pint_. It was their usual dinner spot. The people were pretty fun and the drinks were relatively cheap.

“The kid is just really creative!” Bev was still laughing as she hopped out of the truck and followed Richie towards the entrance.

“But you see now why he’s so frustrating, and I told you to stop calling him a kid.” Richie held one of the doors open for her as the two entered the already somewhat busy lounge.

“I can see that he’s definitely into you. Up or Down?” Bev asked, standing on her tippy toes to look overhead for an empty table. The lounge was two stories, the main had more of a restaurant vibe, with booths and a small walk-up bar at the back. While the upstairs was more centered around the bar with a small dance floor in one corner.

“Down, you know Stan doesn’t like it up there.” Richie replied, ignoring the first part of Bev’s sentence. She grabbed his arm as he finished and pulled him towards a booth that was just being cleaned from its previous occupants. They slid in right as the waitress finished wiping down the table.

“So what’s the game plan. ‘Hey Stan there’s this student in one of my classes and I think I really want to fu-” Richie reached across the table and covered Bev’s mouth with the palm of his hand. He kept his hand there as he craned his neck to look back towards the door.

“I’ve been thinking, you know how you told me to talk to Eddie about this whole… thing?” Bev nodded against his hand.   
“Well, what if I talk to him and he just backs off? Then I don’t even have to tell Stan anything.” He removed his hand when the waitress returned to drop off some menus and ask for their drink orders. They each ordered one as well as three shots for when Stan would join them.

“I mean, I guess. But do you really think he’s going to just drop it?” Bev asked as the waitress turned to go get their drinks.

“Not really, but I can deal with that later.” Richie shrugged, pulling out his phone to check the time. Almost 6.

“Well, you better decide what you’re doing fast.” Bev pushed up in her seat and waved towards the doors. Richie turned his head to see Stan carefully making his way between tables. He spun back around to face Bev before Stan reached the table.

“Do not say anything.” He whispered loudly, grabbing her arm and squeezing. She looked at him and sighed dramatically before nodding.

“Alright… Stan brought a friend?”

Richie turned his head right as Stan arrived at the table. Beside him was a muscular darker man. Mike something maybe? Richie recognized him from around the school. He taught math or history or one of the boring subjects like Stan’s accounting class.

Stan looked down at Richie and motioned forward with his head. Richie shuffled further into the booth, making enough room for him to sit. Bev did the same and scooted over as Mike something thanked her and sat down.

Richie threw his arm around Stan as he sat.

“Wow Stanley I thought we weren’t cool enough to meet your work friends, I’m honored. Richie Tozier.” Richie stuck the arm that wasn’t around Stan across the table.

“Mike Hanlon. Nice to meetcha.” Mike shook Richie’s hand and laughed lightly.

“I’m Bev.” Bev smiled warmly when Mike turned towards her. He nodded and shook her hand as well.

“I don’t introduce you to my ‘work friends’ because you do stupid things and scare them off.” Stan rolled his eye’s and shrugged Richie’s arm off of his shoulder.

Bev rested her elbows on the table and leaned her chin on her hands.

“Speaking of doing stupid things. Rich-“

Bev’s sentence was cut off by Richie kicking her in the leg. He stared wide-eyed at her as Stan and Mike looked between the two of them confused.

“Oh God. What did you do now?” Stan’s eye’s settled on Richie as he raised an eyebrow at him.

“I um, I…” he was going to kill her. As Richie tried to stumble his way through a sentence the waitress returned with their drink order.

“Richie went and already ordered a round of shots. Sorry Mike we didn’t know you would be joining us.” Bev pulled the shot glasses to Richie and Stan, smiling widely over at Richie.

“Rich, you know I have papers to mark tomorrow.” Stan sighed as he grabbed the shot from the table. Richie shook his head and grabbed his shot as well.

“Sorry Stanny, I couldn’t help myself.” Richie held his glass up, looking warningly at Bev, who held back a laugh as she held hers up and clinked it lightly to Richie’s.

Bev was having way too much fun at his expense. It was going to be a long night.

~~~

The rest of the night had been fun, as far as Richie could remember. The alcohol mostly helped Richie forget about the eventual conversations he would have to have. Bev had been relentless in her teasing and Mike had actually been a really cool guy. They had all exchanged numbers and Bev had asked him to join them the next time they went out.

The rest of Richie’s weekend passed by without incident. He headed to the university on Saturday after his hangover had died down a little to read through the work he had assigned on Friday. He left little notes at the bottom of each of the papers.

He deliberately left Eddie’s till the end. He tried to read through the neat writing a few times, but his eyes kept dropping to the bottom of the page where Eddie had scrawled his own note and he would completely forget what he was just reading.  

Richie left his office that afternoon having no clue what Eddie had actually written to be handed in.

Monday rolled around a lot quicker then Richie had wanted it to. He took a few extra minutes in his car to plan exactly what he was going to do. He had taken Bev’s advice for some reason and had dressed more ‘professional’. He glanced at his reflection in the rearview and tugged at the loose tie around his neck.

He sighed at how ridiculous he looked and slowly pushed his car door open. On his way to class, he stopped at his office to grab the stack of papers to hand back to the students. Eddie’s sat on top, exactly how he had handed it in.

He headed toward the class and hesitated a moment. ‘Okay Richie, you’re going to go in there and be the confident, professional teacher you are. Do not let anything get to you.” He muttered quietly to himself before pushing the door open.

He crossed the room to his desk looking out at the students, smiling and returning nodded greetings. As he passed by the middle he chanced a look at the front row and almost stopped when he saw the look Eddie was giving him.

It wasn’t like the usual seductive looks he usually received. His eyebrows were raised slightly and his mouth hung open, his eye’s dropped down Richie’s body then back to his face. He stared with the same expression until Richie had reached his desk and placed the stack of papers down.

Richie grabbed a red pen from the cup on the corner of his desks and looked down at the top paper. It was now or never. He quickly scrawled a sentence at the top of the page.

“See me after class.”

Before he could change his mind he headed straight for the center of the room. Eddie’s mouth had closed and turned into the usual little smirk he gave Richie. They made eye contact as Richie approached him and placed the page in front of Eddie on his desk.

Before Eddie could look down and see the page, Richie had already moved onto the next student. He quickly handed out the rest of the papers and avoided looking towards the front of the room, where he knew he would be met with those deep brown eyes.

As soon as the last of the papers had been handed out, Richie spent time getting the class started. Today was a lecture class so he could just focus on what he was saying and nothing else.

As 10:55 rolled around most of the students started to pack up. Richie wrapped up the last points he wanted to make and dismissed the class. He leaned on his desk and waved as students headed for the door. At the front of the room, Richie could see Eddie talking with Bill Something.

He couldn’t hear what was being said but whatever Eddie was saying was causing Bill to shoot him a confused look. Despite the look, Bill got up with the rest of the students and headed for the door, turning to look back at Eddie before exiting the room.

As soon as the last student left the room and it was just Richie and Eddie, Richie realized this might not have been the best idea.

Eddie stood from his desk and slowly walked over to Richie’s, holding his paper in his hand.

“You wanted to see me, sir?” He asked as he stepped directly in front of Richie, the same mischievous smile on his lips as he spoke.

“Yes, it’s about the um, notes on your papers.” Richie’s eyes dropped to Eddie’s lips as he licked them. He quickly raised them back to his eyes. 

“Oh? What about them?” Eddie took a small step closer, tilting his head to the side ‘innocently’. Richie took a breath and thought about how he wanted this conversation to play out.

Well he knew exactly how he  _wanted_  it to go and it ended with Eddie back at his place but that was, unfortunately not the path he had decided to follow.

“Well um, they are very…inappropriate.” Richie leaned back further into his desk. His eyes glancing back down at Eddie’s lips again. He snapped them back up when Eddie’s smirk grew.

“Oh, I’m sorry sir.” Eddie took another step closer, a larger one this time. His hand came up to grab the middle of Richie’s tie and he tugged lightly. Richie didn’t resist and let himself be pulled closer towards the younger boy and further away from the responsible choice. He shivered as he felt some of Eddie’s hair brush against his cheek as Eddie leaned in to whisper in his ear.

“I can be a lot more inappropriate if you want.”

“Richie?”

Richie and Eddie both snapped to look towards the door.

Stan was standing in the doorframe holding a small stack of paper.

“What’s going on in here?”


	4. Chapter 4

“…Richie?”  Stan asked again when he didn’t get a response. His voice low as he spoke slowly. Richie’s brain sparked back to life as he pushed away from Eddie with his hands in the air.

“No, um. Nothing, nothing’s going on. I swear!” Richie’s eyes went wide and his mouth snapped shut when he saw Stan’s calm face. Stan turned from him to look towards Eddie, His eyebrow raised slightly in question. Eddie huffed out a breath and stepped backward, his hand dragging down Richie’s tie, knuckles brushed his stomach as he dropped his arm to his side.

“I’ll see you next class, Mr. T.” Eddie said without breaking eye contact with Stan. He grabbed his bag as he walked past his desk towards the door. Stan had turned to watch him leave while Richie hadn’t moved his eye’s from Stan, waiting for the eventual avalanche that was coming for him. Eddie paused at the door and looked back over his shoulder, his brows furrowed and mouth in a thin line. His eye’s moved between Richie and Stan before he turned and left the room.

Silence followed the click of the door closing, as Richie continued to stare at the back of Stan’s head. Stan let out a big exhale before slowly turning to face Richie. His hand coming up to rub at his temple as he fully faced him.

“What the fuck Rich.” He said quietly as he walked to towards the desk in front of Richie. He sat on it and crossed his arms looking at Richie expectantly. Richie had followed Stan’s movements with his whole body. His arms were still held out in front of him, almost defensively.

“Explain… I’ll decide after if I believe you.” Stan said after a few seconds of silence. his voice still eerily low.

Richie gulped in a breath as he lowered his hands and leaned himself back on his desk. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure where to start. He should probably start by denying anything was going on, but that wasn’t really true, was it? Richie wasn’t sure but he didn’t think he would have stopped Eddie if Stan hadn’t walked in when he did.

“I know that didn’t look so good.” Richie started slowly, Stan raised his eyebrows in a ‘No shit Sherlock’ kind of way and Richie gave him a weak shrug before continuing.

“But nothing’s happening between us. He’s just a student that has a thing for me.” Richie looked to see what Stan’s face was showing. It wasn’t much. Stan stood from the table and paced in front of Richie’s desk.

“That was not a good scene to walk in on Rich, even if it was all him. Imagine if it was someone that wasn’t me that saw that… you’d be fired on the spot. I told you, never be alone with a student in a room for this exact reason.” Richie’s eye’s followed Stan’s feet as he continued to pace. He had decided to accept the lecture he definitely deserved without protesting.

“How long has it be going on?” He asked, his moving stopped as he stared at the top of Richie’s head. Richie slowly raised his eye’s up to meet Stan’s.

“What do you mean? I told you already noth-“

“Oh, drop that ‘nothing’s going on’ thing, I saw the way you two were looking at each other. So when did whatever this is, start?” Stan cut him off, crossing his arms in front of him again. Richie sighed and admitted defeat,

“Okay sit back down, Its kind of a long story.”

Richie spent a majority of his lunch hour going over everything that had happened between him and Eddie to Stan in extreme detail. Stan had wanted to know absolutely everything. He smacked Richie on the head when he explained how it had all started. The rest of his reactions were less physical and more emotionally hurtful. Stan had some very creative names on reserve just for Richie.

Stan was quiet as Richie finished recalling what had happened earlier that day and how he had gotten into the predicament that Stan had walked into.

“Well, Bev was right about talking with him. your execution of it was pretty stupid and obviously didn’t work, but it was the right idea, sort of.” Stan said after a few minutes of silence.

“What was I supposed to do. I’m not going to bring it up around other students.” Richie had moved away from his desk and was now leaning on the desk Stan was sitting on.

“Well I would have told the Teacher Rep. as soon as it started to happen.” Richie shook his head lightly. He hated the Teacher Rep. He was an old stuffy man who had zero sense of humor and probably would have brought the issue up to the university board or something.

“-But clearly you don’t want to do that. If I were you I would write an email to this student and explain to him, very clearly why this needs to stop. And also stop calling him Eddie, that’s way too casual. You’re supposed to be the authority figure here.” Stan continued and stood from the desk, he placed the stack of papers that Richie had forgotten about on Richie’s desk.

“I tried to dress more professionally?” Richie offered as Stan headed towards the door.

“Yeah, and how did that work out for you?” Stan asked over his shoulder. “I’m serious Richie, figure this out by next week or you’re going to the Teacher Rep.” Stan called over his shoulder as he pulled the door open. A few students started filing into the room and Richie looked at his phone and saw that he and Stan had been talking for his whole lunch.

He sighed and shot a quick text to Bev before shuffling through his papers to hand back to his next class.

~~~

As usual, Richie’s two other classes that day went by basically uneventful. Right as the last class ended he bypassed stopping at his office and went directly to his car. He pulled the driver seat open and tossed his bag into the back seat as he climbed in and grab his almost empty pack of smokes from the console. He cranked the radio up and leaned back in his seat, waiting.

Ten minutes and two cigarettes later, Bev yanked the passenger seat open and hopped into the truck.

“Geez, are you trying to hotbox me.” She said as she waved her hand in front of her face and leaned over Richie to roll his window down with her other hand.

“So Stan knows.” Was all Richie said loudly as Bev took the cigarette from his mouth and flicked it out the window. She didn’t say anything, she just stared at the side of his face.

“Wanna get drunk?” She asked over the music. Richie simply nodded and shifted the car into drive.

During the ride, Bev had turned the music down and forced Richie to tell her what had happened. He grumpily explained how he had asked Eddie to come in after class to talk and how he didn’t know what would have happened if Stan hadn’t shown up and the lecture he had gotten that he knew he would get from Stan.

He finished talking just as they pulled up to The Kings Head. It was a shitty little bar that Bev and Richie liked going to, Stan refused to step foot in it due to its somewhat disheveled exterior. Somewhat was probably to nice actually, the place looked like a complete dump but Bev knew the owner and he was real nice and got them free drinks sometimes, plus the food was surprisingly good.

They entered the bar and the 5 o’clock light from outside was swallowed as the door closed behind them. The windows were tinted and had a variety of posters stuck to them, blocking out any natural light. The medium sized room was lit mostly with dim orange lights that hung over the booths lining the walls. The walk up bar took up the back corner where a majority of the patrons sat.

Bev slid into an empty booth towards the back of the room and waved over towards the bar. Richie sat opposite her and grabbed for the drink menu left on the back of the table.

Dave, the bar’s owner approached their table and took Bev’s hand and kissed it.

“What can I get you two on this fine night?” He asked as he let go of her hand.

“I think were going to need a lot, it’s been a rough day for this one.” Bev reached across the table the patted Richie’s arm. “But first, I think he needs some food. So an order of fries pretty please.” She finished, smiling up at him. He looked over at Richie and nodded before heading back towards the bar.

“So Stan gave you a week. What’s your plan?” She asked as she took the drink menu from his hands and looked it over.

“My plan tonight is to get really drunk. My plan tomorrow is to regret that first plan during class and probably the rest of the day. Anything after that hasn’t been thought of yet.” Richie slid off of the booth bench and headed towards the bar. He ordered a shot and downed it as soon as it arrived, then ordered two whiskey sours for him and Bev. He took them back to the table, almost finishing his on the walk back.

Bev gave him a concerned look before shaking her head and accepting the drink. About ten minutes later Dave returned with a large platter of fries and two shot glasses.

“I brought you a round but It seems that you already got started.” He laughed as he put the platter on the table along with the shot glasses.

“Oh, don’t worry about it, it’s much appreciated,” Richie said as he grabbed one of the glasses and held it up, waiting for Bev to take hers. She gave him that concerned look again before sighing and clinking her glass to his.

A few more rounds of drinks later and Richie was starting to actually relax. He knew that this was probably not the best way to deal with problems but it was definitely the easiest. Bev had found some people she knew and they now sat with them at their table, laughing and drinking much more than he probably should on a Monday night.

Richie headed up towards the bar for the fifth or sixth time and leaned against the slightly sticky countertop, waiting for the bartender to get to him. He tapped his fingers and looked around the decently full bar. He was wondering what kinds of problems these other people were having that they were at this shitty bar getting drunk on a Monday when he noticed the familiar dark brown eye’s watching him from the end of the bar.

His mouth dropped open and eye’s widened. What in the ever loving fuck was Eddie Kaspbrak doing here? He guessed it made sense with the luck he was having anyway right? Why the fuck wouldn’t one of the two people he didn’t want to see be at the exact bar he was at.

Richie’s attention was snapped away from across the bar when the bartender stepped in front of him and asked for his order. He completely forgot what he had come up to get and just asked for the special, whatever that was.

As the bartender moved away to go make his drink he quickly scanned the other end of the bar but couldn’t spot Eddie again.

Was he actually going crazy? There was no way he had had enough to drink that he should be hallucinating. He shook his head and pressed his fingers to his closed eye.

“Looking for me?” A voice asked from his side. Eddie laughed as Richie almost slid off of the counter as he turned.

“You. What are you doing here?” He practically yelled, gaping down at the younger boy. Eddie laughed again and turned to look across the bar.

“Bill said that the food here was really good.” He nodded over to where Richie had seen him sitting before. Two boys were sitting there talking. One was Bill something from class and the other he didn’t recognize. “So far I can’t say I’m the hugest fan of the place.” he looked down at the counter and grimaced as he touched it with one of his fingers. “But I’m starting to like it a lot better.” He finished as he leaned in a little closer to Richie.

Richie’s eyes fell back to Eddie’s and he swallowed down a large gulp.

“Here you go, on your tab?” the bartender asked as he returned with Richie’s drink. Richie nodded, looking away from Eddie and down at his drink. It was a shot that he happily took before grabbing Eddie’s arm and pulling him towards the back of the bar.

“We need to talk.” He said loudly over the ambient noise of the place. Eddie seemed to gladly go along behind him. Richie refused to even glance towards his table as he passed it, he wasn’t sure but Bev was probably giving him some kind of look.

At the side of the bar was a door that lead out into the alleyway. Richie pushed on it roughly and pulled Eddie outside after him. It had grown dark out while Richie was inside, the only light coming from the broken and dangling blub that hung over the door and the light coming from the streetlights in front of the building.

Richie stepped out and placed both hands on Eddie’s shoulders.

“You stay here.” He leaned down so they were eye level. He dropped his hands and took two big dramatic steps backward. Eddie crossed his arms and covered the small smile on his lips with a cough.  

“This.” He gestured between the two of them. “Needs to stop. I’m going to be real honest with you right now, if there wasn’t the whole teacher-student thing, I would probably be down with this whole thing. Actually, I would probably be really down for it.” He stopped when he saw the smirk on Eddie face growing.

“That’s not where I meant to go with that… where the fuck did I mean to go with that?” He quietly asked himself. “Right, no. this can’t happen. Things aren’t supposed to happen between teachers and students, if you were a year younger, this.” He gestured between them again. “would be illegal. Get it? I’m supposed to be the authoritative figure, but I can’t go through class without thinking about whatever this could be.” Richie took a second to breathe. He had started pacing across the alley. Neither said anything until Richie turned to face Eddie.

“You can be the authoritative figure if you want.” Eddie said in a low voice. He took a slow step towards Richie, who held his hands in front of him.

“No, this is exactly what I mean. Stop tempting me God damn it! Stan’s going to fucking kill me.” Richie whispered the last part to himself as he dropped his hands back down to his side’s. Eddie paused at his words. Richie watched as he took a step backwards.

“…Is Mr. Uris your boyfriend?” Eddie asked in a small voice. He had the same look as when he had left the classroom earlier. Richie saw the perfect alibi practically present itself. Without thinking he slowly nodded his head. A sad look passed Eddie’s face before disappearing behind a very fake looking smile.

“Oh… I’m sorry.” He said in a dejected voice. Richie watched as he turned back towards the door.

“I’ll, um, see you Wednesday, Mr. T.” He said over his shoulder as he pushed the door open and disappeared inside.

Richie’s head dropped back against the brick wall behind him. He couldn’t fight off the feeling that he had somehow made a huge mistake.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Life doesn't want to give Richie a break.

Richie stayed out in the alley, watching the door Eddie had disappeared behind for a while. Eddie’s dejected face playing over and over in his mind.

Why did he feel so shitty about this? 

It had been the perfect way to get Eddie to back off and Richie hadn’t even had to think of it, but that nagging feeling of regret followed him back inside the bar and to this table where Bev was sitting alone.

“Oh, Hey. Everyone just left. I thought I was going to have to walk home.” Bev stared up at him confused as he approached the table. Richie shook his head as he ungracefully dropped down onto the bench across from her. He dropped his head to his hand, knocking his glasses higher on his face to rest on his forehead as he rubbed his temples. Apparently, all of the alcohol he had consumed throughout the night had decided to hit him all at once.

Bev looked him up and down before sighing and grabbing her jacket.

“Come on you sad sack, You’re crashing at my place tonight.” She stood with her hands on her hips and looked down at him as his head lulled towards her. She grabbed his arm and helped pull him from the bench, holding up most of his weight as he leaned into her.

They slowly made their way across the bar and towards the front door. Richie glanced back at the bar but didn’t see Eddie or Bill something so he assumed they had left as soon as Eddie had come back inside.

Bev bumped the front door open with her hip and walked Richie to his truck. She leaned him against the passenger door and searched through his pockets for the keys. Once she found them she shifted him over, yanked the door open and pushed him inside.

The short drive to Bev’s place felt like forever for Richie, who was trying his hardest to focus on anything but unfortunately for him, Everything seemed to be moving way faster then it should be. Richie gave up on focusing and leaned his head on the window, savoring the feel of the cool glass on his way to hot head.

Eventually, they made it to her apartment. But the walk to the building entrance and then the trip up to her place seemed to take even longer. Once Bev had basically dragged Richie up to her place, she dropped him unceremoniously onto the couch before heading to the kitchen.

Bev’s Apartment had a very open concept to it, with the kitchen and living room only separated by a small island. The walls were covered with artwork, done by herself and friends. A shitty drawing of Bev, Stan and Richie that Richie had drawn drunk was framed and sat on the coffee table beside Richie.

Bev returned to the living room to Richie on his stomach, half off of the couch with an arm and leg laying on the floor. A pillow was thrown over the back of his head to block out the light coming from the kitchen.

She placed the glass of water on the coffee table and pushed him so he was more on the couch. Once he was actually on the couch she moved his legs and sat facing him at an end.

“Okay, what happened?” she pulled her feet up and wrapped her arms around them as she tucked her knees under her chin.

“I think I fucked up.” Richie groaned, his voice muffled by the couch cushion.

“Yeah, I’m going to need a little more than that Rich.” Bev rolled her eyes and tilted her head to the side in question.

“Eddie, Bev. Eddie was at Kings Head. And I’m a dumb fuck and thought talking to him right now was a great fucking idea.” Richie rolled onto his back, pulling the pillow so that it covered his face.

“Now he thinks…” Richie pressed the pillow harder into his face, muffling the end of his sentence. Bev leaned more over her knees, trying to get closer to hear him.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Now he thinks Stan is my boyfriend.” Richie repeated louder. 

When he didn’t get a response he peaked his eye’s over the top of the pillow to look at her.

Bev stared at him for a few seconds before throwing her hand over her mouth and falling from the couch laughing.

Richie pulled the pillow up to completely cover his face again.

He listened to her laughing for a few seconds before she pulled herself back onto the couch.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Just the thought of you and Stan dating hit me right in the giggle dick.” She said between huffs of breaths. Leaning over him, she grabbed the bottom of the pillow and pulled it away from his face.

“Isn’t this a good thing? No more Eddie problem, Right? Isn’t that what you wanted?” she continued enthusiastically.

Richie sat up, he leaned against the back of the couch of a second before looking over at her, sighing, and dropping his head back down.

“I don’t know. I guess so? I just… I just really can’t shake the feeling that he’s… I don’t know… Different, You know?”  Richie rambled, speaking up at the ceiling and shifting his eye down to look over at Bev every once in a while to see her reaction.

She seemed to be carefully listening to him, all traces of laughter gone from her face.

“Hmm. Well, it sounds like you need to talk to him again. Maybe not when you’re completely shit-faced.” She crooked the corner of her lips up into a sympathetic smile. Richie rolled his eyes and pushed himself up to lean on his elbows.

“Yeah, because talking to him has worked so fucking well before.” Richie raised his eyebrow and swayed slightly as he stared up at her.

“Who knows, maybe he didn’t even believe you and everything will go back to how it was before.” Bev said optimistically.

“No. No, you didn’t see his face. He definitely believed me.” Richie’s stare dropped down from Bev’s face to the couch between them. “I need another drink.” He mumbled as he went to push himself up off the couch. Bev stopped him by placing her hand on his chest.

“No, you need water and sleep.” She used her other hand to pick up the glass from the coffee table and handed it to him. “You still have work tomorrow mister.”

Richie hummed into his water as he drank. Bev patted his leg as she stood and headed towards the hallway. She stopped and turned back to face him.

“Don’t worry, everything will be fine.” She smiled down at him. he stopped drinking and tilted his head to look at her.

“How do you know.”

“Just do. Night Rich.” She turned without waiting for a response and disappeared down the dark hallway.

Richie stared after her before bringing his cup up to his mouth and draining the rest of the liquid. he set the glass back on the table and slumped back down on the couch.

~~

Unsurprisingly, Richie didn’t sleep much that night. He woke to the sound of Bev showering, his back aching slightly and his head pounding.

Rolling off the couch, Richie made for the kitchen.

On the counter were two little pills with a note beside it. “Eat me” was scribbled in messy writing.  

“Idiot.” Richie mumbled to himself with a smile. He scooped up the pills and headed to the sink. He ran some water and stuck his mouth under the tap. Once he had taken both pills he pulled the fridge open to see if Bev had anything he could use to make a thank you breakfast for her.

And as he suspected she didn’t. Bev’s fiancé did basically all of the cooking and whenever he went out of town for work, she would basically live off of takeout.

Richie grabbed an apple from the back of the fridge and returned to the living room. about ten minutes later, Bev emerged from the hallway. Richie stood from the couch and grabbed his keys from the dining table where he guessed Bev had put them the night before.

“Come on Marsh. I’m taking you to breakfast.”

~~

After stopping by his place, grabbing a change of clothes and taking Bev for food, Richie got to the university a little early. He decided to stop at the campus café to grab a coffee. Although the food had helped, he could feel the hangover creeping its way back through his head.

The small café was right beside the main university building and from what Richie could tell was usually pretty busy. the little bell jingled as he pushed the door open. there was a decent line formed in front of the till. Richie checked the time on his phone. 11:10. He still had enough time until class started.

He scrolled through his phone as he waited. Sending a text to Stan first. He knew he was going to have to talk to him sometime soon and explain what had happened. God all he was doing recently was telling Stan about situations that he wasn’t going to be happy about. He asked Stan to meet him in his office for lunch. He didn’t get a reply but assumed that was because Stan was teaching a class.

He moved with the line as he checked his Emails. Most were just junk mail but a couple seemed somewhat important. One was about an upcoming staff meeting, one was from his mother. And the last was something about midterms but he didn’t get to read it as he reached the front of the line.

“Hello, what can I get fo-for you?” The barista asked cheerily, he was finishing something on the till as he spoke, but Richie recognized from his voice. Bill something from class stopped when he looked up from the till, the smile dropping from his face when he saw Richie.

Richie awkwardly smiled at him. He definitely knew what had happened last night. There was no way Eddie hadn’t told him.

“Morning, just a medium black coffee,” Richie said as casually as he could muster. Coffee all of a sudden seemed like a not so good idea.

Bill stared at him for a second, he bit his bottom lip as his eyebrows furrowed. He looked like he wanted to say something really badly, but was forcing himself not to speak. Without looking away from Richie he punched something into the register and then turned to grab the order.

Richie pushed his glasses out of the way and rubbed his eye’s as soon as Bill’s back was to him.

“2 dollars.” Bill said as he turned, his voice low as he spoke. Richie nodded and pulled a five from his wallet.

“Um, keep it.” He turned as soon as he had his coffee and left the café as quickly as he could. He was really done with awkward encounters, which he seemed to be having a lot of recently.

The coffee run had taken up enough time so that as soon as Richie got to class it was time to start. He somewhat mindlessly presented the lesson and ended up ending the class fifteen minutes early. He waited for the students to leave the class before closing up the room and heading towards his office. He had 3 hours till his next class, he could probably take a pretty decent nap in that amount of time.  

He shut the door to his office and headed to his desk. To try and be somewhat productive he decided to answer the Emails he had instead of leaving them like he normally did before taking a nap.

He typed out a quick acknowledging message to the department head about the meeting. As productive as he was trying to be he didn’t feel like dealing with whatever his mother had to say, that was one that was going to have to wait a little bit.

The last Email he deemed ‘Important’ was one from a professor from the humanity’s department. It was reminding Richie that he had agreed to have one of the student’s volunteer as his TA during midterm season for a class credit. Richie absentmindedly read through the message, it was mostly just explaining what a TA was, as if Richie had no idea. The bottom was a thank you and contact information if there were any problems. Under that was the name of the student. Richie almost fell out of his seat.

Edward Kaspbrak

Edward fucking Kaspbrak

Richie had to read the name a few time to make sure he wasn’t reading it wrong. It was like God was sitting up in the clouds and just flipping Richie off.

As if it wouldn’t have been bad enough when Eddie had been constantly flirting with Richie, now things were going to be even weirder and they were going to have to spend even more time together.

Richie dropped his head to his desk, his glasses pushing into his nose uncomfortably. Should he Email asking for another student? No, then he would have to think of some reason why.

A knock on his door interrupted the brainstorm of excuses running through his mind.

“Rich coming in.” Stan informed as he pushed the door open. Richie quickly sat up and closed the Email. He already had to explain to Stan that he had told Eddie that they were dating, he didn’t need to add another layer onto his already ridiculous, coincidence filled life.

“Hey Stanny, come on in. I have some um, good? News.” Stan stopped, his hand still on the door handle.

“I really don’t like how you just said that.” He said still standing. He let out a deep breath before fully entering the room. He stood in front of Richie’s desk and crossed his arms, looking down at him pointedly.

“So I think I took care of the…student problem.” Richie rubbed the back of his neck as Stan’s arms uncrossed and dropped to his sides.

“That’s good news. How did you do it?” Stan asked as he headed towards the couch along one of the walls of Richie’s office.

“Well, um, I might have told him we were dating.”

Stan froze again, his back to Richie.

“You did what.” Stan asked quietly, slowly turning back around. Richie couldn’t help but let out a little laugh at the face he was making. As mad at himself as he was for telling Eddie that he and Stan were dating, Bev was right, the mental image of him and Stan actually dating did crack him up a little bit.

Obviously, Stan didn’t think it was as funny as Richie and Bev did.

“Are you kidding me, Richie. What if people hear about this, what if B-“ Stan stopped and took another deep breath.

“I tell you to fix one problem and you go and create more!” Stan angrily mumbled as he headed for the door. he stopped before leaving and looked back at Richie, shaking his head. Richie shot him a cheesy fake smile as he pulled the door shut, harder than necessary.

Richie dropped his cheek to rest on his hand.

“Well, that could have gone worse.”


	6. Chapter 5.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eddie's take on the past events.

Eddie was always exceptional when it came to school. And he should be, from elementary to high school, he put in twice as much work as the other students. 

At first, it hadn’t been of his own doing. If it had been up to him, he would have been playing outside with all the other kids during recess. But it wasn’t up to him. His mother had insisted that running around outside was too dangerous for her delicate, fragile son.

There was only so many things a 9-year-old Eddie could do alone in the library, he had gone through most of the “fun” books in half a year and had soon moved on to more academic ones. He enjoyed reading the science-y book because then when his mother would take him to the doctors for his monthly check-up, he started to recognize some of the words that they would talk about. 

One of the only good things to come out of Eddie’s indoor recesses was meeting Bill Denbrough when he was 12. It wasn’t like the two didn’t know each other, they just didn’t talk that much. Bill was recovering from a bad cold and wasn’t allowed to go out for the hour-long break that the students were given after lunch. The two spent almost a month together and were rarely seen apart at school after that. 

Sonia Kaspbrak didn’t like the idea of Eddie hanging around kids his age and used Eddie’s ‘Sicknesses’ to completely control him through middle school.

It wasn’t until the high school that Eddie realized that basically everything his mother said was bullshit and that there was really nothing wrong with him. That was when his rebelliousness started.

First, it was little things, like saying he was going to the library but actually going to Bill’s to play video games. Eddie still stayed ahead in school, now it was more whenever he was home he wanted to avoid spending time with his mother and schoolwork seemed to be the only excuse that would satisfy her.

The older he got, the bolder he got with doing what he wanted whether his mother liked it or not, slowly chipping away at the control she had once had over him.

His first and second years of university had been really rough ones. Not for the typical reasons that early year uni students complained about.

When Bill had moved out of his parent’s place and into student housing, Eddie, like always, wasn’t far behind. His mother would never allow him to move out on his own so young and since she was paying for his classes he didn’t really have a good argument against her. But she was delusional if she thought he wouldn’t spend as much time at Bill’s as he could without having to file for residency.

It was at Bill place during a party that Eddie met his first boyfriend. 

He had always known he was gay, well as long as he had known what gay was. It had been a pretty emotional conversation with Bill when he had come out to him in grade 12, considering Bill was the first boy he was pretty sure he had loved. But that time was long past at that point and Bill had been extremely accepting and almost understanding?

They had both agreed that telling Sonia was definitely a bad idea. She wasn’t subtle in her dislike of anything that wasn’t exactly what she had planned and she definitely didn’t plan for Eddie to bring home a boyfriend.

It wasn’t until halfway through his second year that one of Sonia’s friends had seen Eddie with his then-boyfriend in a slightly less than friendly situation. Not even an hour later Eddie received a phone call demanding he come home that instant. There had been lots of crying and emotions that night but had eventually ended with Sonia threating to pull Eddie from school.

That had been enough to get Eddie to agree to whatever terms she had made. University was his only chance of getting out of this hellhole that he used to call home.

Unfortunately, Sonia’s terms included, basically going straight to university and back, Bill’s was absolutely off limits, Eddie had to keep his grades above a 3.5 and of course dating was forbidden.

As shitty as it had been for the first couple of month, eventually Eddie worked his way back into his mother’s good graces, if she even had one. She had set a pretty strict curfew but he was allowed to occasionally go out for fun.

By the time Eddie had reached his fourth year most of his mother’s rules had slackened, the only ones still fairly strictly enforced was that Eddie kept his grades up and absolutely no dating.

Eddie had found way’s around that last rule. Meeting guys at school was easy enough, he wasn’t really one to brag but he knew he wasn’t the worst looking guy. Plus, he knew what worked for him. for example, pastel colors worked really well with his skin tone, his hair parted a certain way complemented his face, and of course, his legs, which he had been told on multiple occasions were a highlight of his body.

~~~

It had been about two months since Sonia had reluctantly agreed that Eddie could hang out at Bill’s again and Eddie had taken every opportunity to be there.

Eddie had his laptop in front of him on the coffee table.

“Why the hell do I have to take an art class when I’m in the faculty of science.” Eddie rolled his eye’s and flopped backwards on to Bill’s couch. Bill shoved Eddie back into a sitting position.

“Because tha-that’s what th-they say you need.” Bill leaned over his own computer and continued scrolling through the available classes. Bill had been trying to find an art’s class that Eddie wouldn’t completely hate. Anything that had to do actual art had been ruled out due to Eddie’s complete lack of artistic ability.

“What about ‘Renaissance Art Appreciation’?” Bill asked as he turned his computer so Eddie could read the class description.

“Nope, I have another class then.” Eddie glanced over the class details. 

“What about this one?” Eddie clicked on a class that fit into an empty slot he had.

“Film Studies?” Bill asked, a little surprised? “doesn’t seem like your kind of class.”

“Do any of these seem like ‘my kind of class’?”

“That’s true, think we can both get in?” Bill type the name of the class into his own computer.

“Yeah, fuck it, I don’t think I’m going to find much better.” Eddie clicked the register button and watched as Bill clicked his as well. “Great, let’s get this stupid credit out of the way.”

~~~

The start of classes didn’t seem to come fast enough. Eddie hated when school was off. It was the perfect reason to get out of the house and it was the only one he could use that his mom wouldn’t argue.

Eddie had meet Bill at The Uni-Bean, the coffee shop he worked at and the two headed to class together.

They got there about twenty minutes early and the class was already pretty full, the only spot with two seats beside each other was directly in the front row. As they sat down, Eddie looked around the room, scanning for any ‘interesting’ faces. He didn’t really see any. He had no clue why a class like this was so popular. Watching movies and talking about them seemed like a bit of a pointless class to him.

Bill pulled out his phone and busied himself texting someone, something he had been doing a lot of recently. 

Eddie, not really feeling like pulling anything out yet, tuned into the conversation going on beside him. the two girls sitting there were whispering, something about the prof, Eddie only really caught the tail end of one of their sentences.

“-He’s really hot.”

The professor’s name on the class information page had been Richard Tozier, that was definitely an old man name. besides he only ever seen one male prof at the school that was decent looking and he was pretty sure he didn’t teach media studies.

Eddie rolled his eye’s as he looked over to Bill, who was just slipping his phone back into his pocket.

“Have you ever had a teacher that was actually hot and not just ‘teacher hot’.” Eddie asked, somewhat as a joke but also somewhat curious. Bill let out a little laugh.

“‘Te-teacher hot’?” Bill raised his eyebrow in question, a slight smile on his face.

“You know, like hot for a teacher but on a larger scale, not really that hot.” Eddie leaned closer to Bill.

“I don’t know, that psy-psychology teacher we had last ye-year was quite a looker.” Bill joked, both boy’s smiled at the comment. A soft chuckle pulled their attention to the seat behind them.

A guy was sitting there alone. Clearly he had been listening to what they had been saying by the way he was leaning over his desk towards them and the smirk on his face as he stared over that them.

He had extremely curly dark hair that Eddie kinda wanted to run his finger through, or pull, really hard. His glasses seemed like they would be too big to look good on anyone but he somehow managed to pull it off. His cheekbones were sharp with a slight shadow of facial hair covering them. He was undoubtedly older, probably coming back to school after taking a couple years off and Eddie was very much okay with that, more experience.

Eddie definitely didn’t notice him when they had walked in. He dropped his eye’s as he not so subtly checked the other out.

“Come on, That’s hardly fair. You can’t compare every teacher to Ms. Monroe.” The guy said, his voice was somewhat lower and fairly pleasant to listen to. “I’m sure there’s a few good looking teachers somewhere.”

Eddie watched as he leaned closer on his desk and smiled at him. Eddie copied the movement and pushed his chair back. He strategically placed his arm as close to the others as he could without actually touching it, and dropped his eye’s to take a better look. This class was going to be a more interesting then he had originally thought it would be. Bill laughed from beside him, he knew what Eddie’s plan was here.

“I’m sure there is somewhere. But I’m more sure that there’s better-looking students even closer.” Eddie moved slightly closer, smiling up at the older man.

Eddie noticed the wanting look that quickly disappears behind a shocked face. He hesitated before abruptly pushing away and standing. That was a new reaction.

The man introduced himself as Mr. Tozier… This, was his professor,,, well this class had just gotten A LOT more interesting then he had thought.

A professor huh. Eddie had never thought about one in the way he was currently thinking about this one. And Eddie wasn’t stupid, he had seen the way Mr. Tozier had looked at him.

As Mr. Tozier stood at the front of the class him and Eddie locked eye’s and Eddie right then and there decided that teacher or not he wanted him.

~~~

From that day on, Eddie made it his personal goal to get his good-looking, young, media studies teacher to notice him. and after the first week, Eddie was pretty sure he was doing a great job. A few time he had caught his professor looking at him. A couple of time they would make eye contact and Eddie could tell that there was something there but the other would turn away quickly.

The notes started the second week and had actually been Bill’s idea. Bill had teased him about the first class incident but that had died away pretty fast when he realized Eddie was actually still down to pursue the older man.

When their first hand-in assignment was due Bill suggested Eddie write something for him. it had started out as a joke but the more notes Eddie wrote, the more serious Eddie got about them.

The second seducing suggestion Bill had made was the shorts. They were a pair of running shorts that Eddie probably should have replaced but had somewhat gotten attached to them. The first time Eddie had worn them to class had been a day that they had watched a movie and he had definitely caught Mr. T staring at him throughout the class.

~~~

Eddie had planned to graduate from the university a year earlier than most in the medical field. He had started at the university with almost a years worth of university credits from advanced high school classes. And due to that he only needed a few more to be a full year ahead of the rest of the students in his year.

To get some of those he had signed up for a program to TA for professors during the busier times of the school year.

Eddie hadn’t really been looking forward to it, it was going to mean less free time for him and more at the university. That completely changed when he found out exactly who he would be TAing for. He wasn’t sure of the odds but he knew they were very low that we would get Mr. T but he was real happy about it.

Around the time Eddie found out about his placement was also the first time Mr. T had acknowledged the notes Eddie had been leaving on his papers.

The “See me after class” in red pen at the top of his paper when he got it back threw Eddie off. there was no way this wasn’t a move, right? Eddie had been flirting so hard, there was no way Mr. T would ask him to stay alone after class without there being another meaning to it.

Eddie couldn’t really pay attention to anything said throughout the class, and as it came close to the end of it Eddie kind of felt… nervous? He hadn’t felt nervous talking to a guy in years. 

Was it because he was a teacher? 

No. Eddie had thought about that aspect of the situation a lot and he had come to the conclusion that it didn’t bother him in the slightest.

“He asked me to stay after class.” Eddie whispered to Bill as the rest of the class started to pack up. Bill’s eyebrows raised and he glanced over towards the front of the room and then back to Eddie.

“Okay, have fun.” Bill winked as he stood and headed towards the door.

Eddie had dialed his flirting up and things were going really well, at least he thought they were. Mr. t wasn’t initiating anything but he definitely wasn’t pulling away or anything either.

Things were going well until they were interrupted. Eddie was pretty sure they were about to kiss then Mr. Uris walk through the door. Bill had had Mr. Uris as a teacher before and he had said that he had liked him but at the moment Eddie absolutely hated him. He left the room pretty ticked off and spent the rest of the day that way.

After his last class, he headed to Bill’s place and dropped down on his couch. Bill was in the kitchen cooking but listened as Eddie explained what had happened. Bill remained quiet, listen intently until Eddie had brought up Mr. Uris.

“I don’t like him.” Eddie said grumpily. Bill had moved from the kitchen and was leaning against the wall. He laughed at Eddie’s face.

“Why? Because he interrupted your teacher time.” Bill laughed again when Eddie glared at him.

“No, I think something was going on with them. Do you think their together?” Eddie asked, the glare dropping. Bill responded a little too quickly.

“No, absolutely not.” Bill shook his head. Eddie raised his eye up at him, giving him a questioning look. Bill shrugged and looked over his shoulder towards the kitchen.

“Hey, I’ve got no food here. Wanna go somewhere for dinner, I know a pretty good spot.”

Eddie watched Bill suspiciously as he walked across the room and grabbed his keys but stood anyways.

He called his mother and let her know that he was staying at Bill’s to study late. The lie was just a way to not have to talk his mother into not freaking out about him going somewhere new for the first time.

The two headed out of bill’s place, Eddie made sure to make a mental note to question Bill about his behavior later.

The bar looked pretty run down and the kind of place Eddie would never set foot in, but Bill had insisted that it was really good. He had eventually agreed to go in because he was really hungry and he trusted Bill’s judgment.

The inside wasn’t much better than the outside. It was dimly lit and the table Bill had sat at didn’t seem to have been fully cleaned anytime that night. As much as Eddie didn’t like the vibe of the place he had to give it to Bill that the food was actually really good. They ate, talking about school and the newest crazy thing Eddie’s mom had done.

As they finished Bill noticed someone he knew from school sitting up at the bar towards the back. Bill dragged Eddie up to the bar and the two started talking, leaving Eddie to himself.

Eddie looked around the bar, scanning through the thinning crowd of people around the counter. His eye’s stopped when he looked directly across from where he sat.

Mr. T was leaning against the bar, he also seemed to be looking around the bar. Eddie smiled as he watched him. He really was a good looking guy.

He was talking himself up to go talk to him, without the school pretext, when Eddie noticed his stare was being returned. Mr. T was staring over at him in disbelief. Eddie smiled more at the face he was making.

He took a breath and decided to just go for it, what was the worst that could happen? He pushed away from the bar and made his way around it, his eye’s never leaving Mr. T. His smile grew as he watched the confused expression run across his face.

“Looking for me?”

~~~

He had been right. Mr. T and Mr. Uris were together. Eddie bit his lip as he sped his way over to where Bill was talking at the bar. He reached his hand up and grabbed Bill’s sleeve, pulling him towards the exit. Bill called a goodbye to whoever he had been talking to and turned to walk on his one beside Eddie.

“What’s going on?” He asked as Eddie pushed the front door open. Eddie bit his lip harder and looked down to the ground.

There was no way he should be feeling this bad about his teacher seeing someone. 

So Eddie had just been imagining things, there were no shared feelings and he had just been being a nuisance to the older man. No wonder Mr. T had looked so scared when Mr. Uris had walked in on them, at first Eddie had thought it was because he was a student but it was obvious now that it was because they were together.

Eddie pulled the car door open to Bill’s car and got in, Bill got into the driver’s seat and turned in his seat to face Eddie.

“What the hell happened?”

“Their dating…I was right” Eddie replied quietly. Bill’s forehead wrinkled as he continued to stare.

“No. He was obviously lying.” Bill turned to face forward and also bit his lip, dropping his eye’s to stare at the wheel.

“He wasn’t. He looked really scared about him finding out about us.” Eddie’s head dropped to look down at the floor.

Neither said anything for a few minutes and sat in silence until eventually Bill turned the key and started the car. Not much more was said between the two as Bill dropped Eddie off at home.

They quietly said bye as Eddie headed towards the house. His mother was waiting just inside the door when he opened it.

“Where have you been!” Sonia hurriedly asked as Eddie pushed the door closed behind him.

“I told you, I was studying at Bill’s.” Eddie moved passed her and started to make his way up the stairs towards his room.

“Studying? You’re there studying a lot recently.” Sonia followed him to the bottom of the stairs. Eddie sighed as he continued up to his room.

“Yes, mom. He lives really close to the library so it’s easier to just go there.” He stopped at the top and turned to look down at her.

“I’m just worried about you Eddie bear. I heard an awful rumor about that boy this weekend and I don’t want him to have a bad influence on you, you’ve been doing so well at getting over your sicknesses.” She looked up at him worriedly. Eddie rolled his eye’s as he turned back towards his room.

“Everything is fine mom.” He called over his shoulder, basically ignoring everything she was saying. He closed the door behind him, effectively shutting out anything else she felt like yelling up at him.

Dropping his bag beside his desk he slumped over to the bed and dropped down onto it, curling up on his side. He had seriously thought that there was something between them, something that he really wanted to explore. His head fell back on his pillow and he fell asleep that night dreaming about the teacher that he was unfortunately never going to get.


	7. Chapter 6

Stan ignored the 3 calls from Richie that night. Richie tried him one last time as he sat on his couch and absentmindedly flipped channels. After a few rings, Stan’s voice asked to leave a message, played through the receiver. As the beep sounded Richie sighed.

“You know Stanley if this relationship is going to work you really need to stop ignoring me. Call me back.”

He sighed again as he hung up the phone and dropped his head back against the back of the couch. Looking around his living room he figured it was about time he cleaned up his apartment a bit.

The studio apartment itself was pretty small. It had been the first one Richie had been able to afford when he was still a student and trying to get out of his parent’s place. it wasn’t that his parents were that bad, they were actually pretty good; especially to his younger sister, Richie just wasn’t the biggest fan of family drama. So he has moved out as soon as possible and even though now that he had enough money to get a much nicer place, the small space was his home.

Not really feeling like cleaning at that exact moment, Richie picked up his phone again and dialed another familiar number. the phone rang a few times before Bev picked up.

“Heyo, couldn’t get enough of me this morning?” Bev greeted, Richie could hear the click of a door somewhere in the background.

“I never can. So Stan’s mad at me again.” Richie stood and wandered into the kitchen and throw open the fridge door.

“When isn’t he? Did you tell him about the…dating thing.” Bev paused before the word dating and giggled to herself quietly.

“Yep, he didn’t take it so well. worried people will hear about it. Wanna come over for a bit and watch something?” He grabbed a bottle of water and headed back towards the couch.

“He’s probably worried about it affecting his reputation or something. And I can’t, Ben just got back. don’t you have something you can mark or something for work?” Richie could hear someone’s muffled voice coming from Bev’s end.

“I’ll find something, tell ol’Benny that I said hi. Talk to ya later.” Richie hung up, not wanting to interrupt anymore of their night then he already had. Whenever Ben would get back from work trips he would make Bev a romantic dinner and they would spend the night together. Bev never shared any details so Richie assumed it was super dirty, whatever it was.

In the end, he decided to watch some old reruns of comedy shows, and then went to bed somewhat early. He woke up a couple times throughout the night, figuring it was because he wasn’t looking forward to the next day and his body was giving him two big middle fingers just like the rest of his life, he rolled over and tried to fall back asleep.

The morning wasn’t much better than the night. As another big ‘Fuck you’ from life, the power had gone out sometime during the night, restarting all of the appliances, including his alarm clock.

He hurriedly got dress and rushed out of his apartment at 9:20, ten minutes before his first class started. Looking into the rearview mirror, He tried to run his fingers through his out of control hair. He gave up and focused on not being extremely late to class.

His focus didn’t really help and he ended up being about 10 minutes late. He threw the door open when he got to the classroom and barged in, apologizing as he made his way across the room, ignoring looking at the front of the room for totally different reasons than before. His willpower not to look wasn’t strong enough and as he passed by the middle he glanced down to the front.

Eddie was staring at him, his mouth slightly open, but dropped his head down to look at his desk when they meet eyes. Well, that was something he had never done. Richie’s eye’s roamed over to Bill who was looking at Eddie with a concerned look. That look turned to anger as Bill faced the front of the room.

Richie quickly turned away, those looks were 100% worse then the ones Eddie used to give him.

He greeted the class as he got to his desk and started setting up his computer for the movie they were going to watch that week, the students chatting amongst themselves as he did.

Once he had everything set up he crossed back across the room to shut off the lights, completely avoiding looking at any of the students as he made his way. He stopped to pull the screen down on his way back and quickly hit play on his computer.

Richie sighed as he sat at his desk, He was so glad it was a movie day and not one where he would actually have to interact with a specific someone, but as the movie went on Richie couldn’t help but let his eyes wander from the screen towards the front of the room.

Usually, on movie days he would always find eye’s staring back at him and that sly little smirk following. Today he was just meet with the side of Eddie’s face or occasionally the top of his head. Richie didn’t like when the students didn’t pay attention to what was going on in class but he almost preferred Eddie with his head down because then he didn’t have to see his face, which looked pretty sad.

Richie was pretty sure during the hour and a half class that he had stared at Eddie more then he had the whole semester. He just couldn’t seem to take his eye’s off of the boy and he wasn’t even doing anything. Just sitting there, looking kinda sad in a dark classroom.

Richie rubbed his forehead as the credits started to play and he stood and crossed the room towards the light switch. A few of the students groaned and squinted at the light. Richie turned and paused at the door before heading back to his desk. the class quickly emptied with Eddie and Bill being two of the first to leave.

The next class with Eddie was basically the same. It was a class discussion and every time Richie would come around to Eddie’s group to listen he would go quiet and look down at his notes, completely ignoring Richie.

At the end of the class when all the students had handed back their work, Richie found himself actually bummed to find Eddie’s looking exactly like the other students. No note, no slightly flirty subtext in his writing, he had just answered the question and that was it.

It was almost more distracting to mark then when there were notes on the page. He marked half the paper then called Bev to ask if she wanted to go out for drinks or something. He didn’t even try to call Stan, who still hadn’t said anything to him since the ‘fake dating’ thing.

Bev said she would bring Ben and as a last minute thought Richie called Mike to see if he was interested in going out somewhere. He had been pretty fun last time and maybe he had some insight on Stan’s bitchy behavior.

They had decided to go to Tavern, a pretty good bar with decent food and Mike enthusiastically agreed to meet them there.

By the time he had finished marking everything and made it the Tavern, Bev and Ben were already there with a table towards the back. Richie quickly crossed the floor and flopped down into the spot beside Ben, dropping his face into his crossed arms.

“Welcome back Haystack, have a nice trip.” He mumbled against the material of his sleeve. Richie had drunkenly called Ben Haystacks when they were looking at childhood photos one night and he found the nickname so funny that it kinda stuck, despite Ben looking nothing like he had when he was younger.

Richie loved Bev’s future husband. The first time they had met he had been a little hesitant about him because he came off as somewhat shy and reserved but the more he got to know him the more he found out he liked about him. Ben was pretty good at keeping up with Richie’s banter, which most people weren’t too good at, he could completely drink Richie under the table, which Richie respected and he was absolutely head over heels in love with Bev which was maybe one of Richie’s favourite things about him, because Bev deserved someone who was.

“It wasn’t too bad, Canada’s really nice right now. Stan’s not coming today?” Ben asked as Bev reached across the table and pushed Richie’s head up till he was sitting.

“Mommy and daddy are fighting right now.” Bev laughed at the look Richie was giving her, his face slightly squished where her hand was holding him up. She let go of his head and laughed again when it landed back on his arm.

“As long as I get to be daddy in that scenario.” Richie mumbled and sat back up, leaning on his hand to face Ben.

“Knowing Stan, I think you might be stuck being mommy.” Richie heard a voice come from behind him.

“Hey Mike.” Bev said excitedly as she slid over on the bench to make room for him. Richie nodded up at him as he sat.

Bev introduced Ben and Mike, which apparently wasn’t all that necessary because the two knew each other from some library thing, a book club or something, Richie kinda stopped paying attention after libraries were mentioned, he had spent more then enough time there during his university years to freely want to go back for a while.  

The waitress came by and took their orders and Ben and Mike went back to talking about something a little more academic then Richie wanted to be talking about on a Friday night. He lightly kicked Bev under the table.

“Hey Marsh, wanna go for a smoke?” He asked when she turned to face him. Mike stood from the booth to let Bev out as she nodded and grabbed her purse. The two headed towards the back of the room where the rear exit was.

Richie leaned against the brick wall of the alleyway as Bev pulled out the carton of cigarettes from her bag.

“So you and Stan seriously still aren’t talking?” She asked as she stuck the filtered end in her mouth and lit it.

“Nope. He’s acting like I fucked his sister or something.” Richie took the lighter from Bev and lit his own.

“And you’re sure you didn’t do or say anything else that would have pissed him off?” She joined him against the wall, looking up at him as he thought.

“Nope.” He said after a few seconds of thinking. “Not that I can think of. I told him Eddie thought we were dating and then he stormed out, speaking of Eddie I don’t know how much longer I can take having him in my class.” Richie paused to take a long drag from his cigarette.

“Whadda mean?” Bev turned to look up at the sky.

“I mean, I thought I would be happy when all the flirting stopped, but I don’t know if I’ve ever been so not excited for a class ever, like in both teaching and being the student sense. He just sits there like the rest of them and I can’t help but stare at him. and he won’t even look at me anymore and I should be happy about that but I’m not. At all.” Richie dropped his head back to also look up at the sky, raising his hand to his mouth.

“So wait, You’re saying you still have feelings for him!” Bev pushed off from the wall and looked over at Richie, who mumbled something that sounded like ‘maybe’ around his cigarette.

“Oh shit. I thought I told you to talk to him.” She crossed her arms, still staring up at him.

“I can’t do it.” Richie tossed what was left of his smoke to the ground and stepped on it as he walked towards the door. “Besides, I kind of think he hates me now.”

Bev rushed ahead of him and smacked him on the head as she passed. He stopped and rubbed at where she had hit, watching her as she sat down at the table and acted like she hadn’t just psychically assaulted him.

Not wanting to bring up anything that they had been talking about with the others Richie quietly sat down and joined into the conversation currently going on.

~~~

Richie thought about what Bev had said for the rest of the weekend. Both about the Stan thing and about the Eddie thing. He hated to admit it but he was starting to miss Stan so he was going to have to find some way to work that out.

Eddie was definitely another problem that he had to solve quickly. With mid-terms coming up he really didn’t want to spend his evenings awkwardly sitting in his office with Eddie marking exams late at night. That sounded like actual torture.

When Monday’s class rolled around Richie really really wasn’t looking forward to it. He lectured like normal, choosing to stay more behind his desk then he normally would. He wondered if the other students had noticed anything off about him. Probably not.

Nothing with Eddie had changed. He still didn’t look at Richie, even as he talked, just kept his head down and took notes, looking over to whisper something to Bill every once in a while.

The class ended and Richie felt even shittier then at the start.

On Tuesday Stan replied to one of the numerous stupid texts Richie had sent him but hadn’t said anything else. hey, it was some kind of progress.  

Richie went into Wednesdays class feeling a little bit better. That good feeling went away completely when he saw Eddie. He just looked like he really didn’t want to be there anymore, and Richie suspected he probably didn’t.

Just like the week before, Richie hit the lights and started the short film and immediately found himself staring at the younger boy in the dark classroom. The same expressions on his face the whole time. 

As the end of the movie played, Richie stood and walked to hit the lights and then turned to walk back. He walked slowly at first but picked up speed as his course angled a bit.

He was about to do something really stupid, wasn’t he? He thought to himself as he stopped in front of Eddie’s desk. Eddie looked up at him confused as he approached, from the corner of his eye he could see Bill with an almost identical look.

“I want to talk to you after class.” he said quietly, nodding as the confusion grew on Eddie’s face, and turned back towards the door. He stood there and waited as students filed out, smiling and muttering goodbyes.

Richie watched as Bill and Eddie had a whispered conversation which ended in Bill hesitantly standing and slowly walking out of the room glaring at Richie as he passed.

When the last student had left Richie closed the door and turned to face the room.

What the fuck was he doing, what was his plan even, oh right he didn’t have one. He was just thinking about Eddie and how sad he had looked and how Bev had told him they need to talk. What was he even going to say right now that wasn’t completely awkward.

“Mr. T? What did you want to talk about?” Eddie asked, still sitting at his desk. Richie shook his head and looked towards him. He noticed how different Eddie voice sounded compared to the last time they had been alone in the classroom.

Richie took a step into the room and quickly thought of something to say.

“Is Mr. Uris going to be okay with this?” Eddie asked again before Richie could even open his mouth. The question threw Richie off and then it was his turn to look confused.

“What do you mean?” He asked as he stopped in front of Eddie desk again, looking down at him.

“You being here alone with me. He didn’t seem to like it that much last time.” Eddie looked down at the binder still opened on his desk. in an attempted to not look at Richie he played with a corner of it.

“Stan, um, won’t care. I have to talk to you about a school thing anyways.” Richie looked at the top of his head and then pulled the chair Bill had been sitting in out from under the desk. He wasn’t a huge fan of the power dynamic going on here. He sat in it backwards and leaned his arms on the backrest.

“I got an email saying you were going to be my TA this year.”  Richie continued when it didn’t look like Eddie was going to say anything. Eddie eye’s glanced over to Richie and he slowly turned to face him.

“Is Mr. Uris going to be okay with that?” He asked, dropping his head back down but still looking over at him with his eye’s.

“Stan doesn’t really get a say in that.”

“But won’t he get upset.” Eddie turned again to look at him.

“Not for why you think he will.” Richie muttered under his breath. “Let's not talk about Stan right now.” He said louder, smiling what he hoped was a reassuring smile.

“But he…”

“He doesn’t get a say in it…” here was where he was going to say something that he regretted. “Because we’re not together. He’s just a friend. I have no romantic feelings towa-“

Richie was cut off by the light press of Eddie’s lips on his.

His eye’s widened in shock. Almost every instinct in him yelled to push away but an even bigger want for this won out, and just as he closed his eye’s and started to press back into the kiss, Eddie’s lips were gone.

“So you lied to me huh. Bill was right.” Eddie smiled to himself as he started packing up his binder. Richie sat staring up at him in complete and utter disbelief.

“Have fun getting that out of your head.” Eddie laughed as he grabbed his bag and headed for the door, swaying his hips way more than necessary.

Richie sat in the chair, staring at the door for another minute or so, not moving. When he finally did, he rubbed his face with his hands, pushing his glasses up on his face. He shook his head and smiled to himself.

“Shit.”


	8. Chapter 7

During his next two classes that day Richie was happy that it was a movie day for completely different reasons from his first class. The darkness of the classroom made it easier to hide the dopey smiles that spread across his face. He basically kept his hand covering his mouth for the most part, just in case any of the students decided to observe him to closely.

A large part of his brain was still yelling at him that he was an idiot and had let that situation get way out of hand. He chooses to ignore that part for the moment. Besides, when had he ever really listened to the reasonable part of his brain anyway.

On the drive home after his last class, Richie figured it was time that he actually thought about this logically. So Eddie and him were definitely going to have to have that conversation now, whether they wanted to or not. As much as he liked the after class meeting they had had that day, not much had been achieved in a talking sense.

As Richie pulled up to a red light, his phone dinged, signaling a message. He grabbed it and looked at who it was from. He felt a whole bunch of different emotions when Stan’s name flashed on the screen. Guilt, annoyance and relief among the most prominent. 

He unlocked his phone quickly before the light changed and read the message.

**The Man:** _God, you’re really exhausting to ignore. Lunch tomorrow?_

Richie tossed the phone back onto the passenger seat just as the light turned green. There was no way Stan could know about any of the recent developments, even telling Bev didn’t really seem like that good of an idea. He should probably figure out what exactly was going on before he told anyone else about it, right?

He called Stan once he had gotten home and the two talked like nothing had even happened. Richie was still confused/curious as to why Stan had freaked out in the first place, but just talking to his best friend again was good enough for now.

They had agreed to meet at the school’s cafeteria for lunch the next day and Richie was pretty excited about it. The two had been best friends since they were in elementary school when some kids from Stan’s class were picking on him, and despite the fact that the kids were in fifth grade and Richie had just entered grade two, he rushed right in and jumped on one of their backs for being mean. He ended up getting in trouble from the teachers for fighting and wasn’t allowed outside for recess for the next couple of day but he unknowingly at the time, had made a new lifelong friend.

In those many years of being friends, Richie had only managed to piss Stan off enough that the older boy refused to talk to him twice. once when Stan was in ninth grade and had just finished a very detailed diorama for a science class and Richie had accidentally bumped it off Stan’s dining room table the morning that it was due. Stan didn’t talk to him for a week after that.

The other was during Stan’s first year of university. He had been pretty stressed with class and Richie wanted to try to cheer him up. It had taken him weeks of going to different pet stores to find three specific kinds of birds, all ones Stan had previously mentioned were his favorite. The plan was to bring them to one of Stan’s more stressful classes and surprise him. Stan had been kinda mad when Richie showed up but Richie had the birds cover and he was sure he would be happy when he saw them, but as he went to pull the cover off his hand hit the gate latch and let them out into the classroom.

It had taken about three hours to catch all three. It turned out that this particular teacher didn’t really see the humor in the situation, and Stan had almost been kicked out of the class. that time had been about a week and a half.

Every time they had fought, Richie was pretty quick it admit that it was his fault, even if his intentions were good. This time he genuinely had no clue as to what he had done. It was probably best not to press Stan about It during their lunch, which he didn’t.

The two sat and talked about random things. What was going on around the school, Richie not calling his parents, Bev and Bens wedding, the usual stuff.

Richie left to teach his next class feeling really good about everything. Except for the huge secret that he was currently keeping from him, Richie and Stan seemed to be back too normal. He still had to deal with that big secret, and he was going to. Tomorrow, after his morning class.

Even though Richie wasn’t too sure how that Friday would work out, he actually managed to get a decent sleep the night before, he got to the class at the time when a normal professor would get there.

There were already some students in the room when Richie took a seat at his desk. To pass the fifteen minutes until the class started, Richie pulled out some work he still had to mark from other classes and started on that.

He got through about two and a half before the distraction walked through that door. Said distraction was currently wearing the shorts™. Richie had only looked up for about two seconds and in those two seconds he might have slightly checked the younger man out. As quick as he had believed he had been when his eyes traveled up to Eddie's face he was wearing that somehow attractive cocky smirk.

Richie shook his head and looked away as Eddie arched his eyebrow up at him.

They were definitely going to have to set some classroom ‘rules’ if whatever this was, was going to continue, and the shorts were going to be rule number one.

Richie focused back on his marking, hoping to get at least two more done before 9:30 rolled around. He finished one and looked around the room to see how many students were still missing. He made the stupid mistake of looking towards the front where Eddie was sitting.

He had taken out his notebook, which sat open in front of him. He had also taken a pen out of his bag and currently had the tip of that pen lightly resting on his bottom lip.

It was like he had been waiting for Richie to look over at him because as soon as they met eye’s Eddie smiled and his tongue licked at the corners of his mouth. Richie’s eyes were drawn down and he remembered the feeling of those lips against his, basically exactly where Eddie was sitting.

When Eddie sucked the tip of the pen into his mouth, Richie snapped his eye’s back up. Eddie had a mischievous look on his face now and Richie knew this was going to have to be rule number 2.

Thankfully before Eddie could get any further into his teasing, Bill plopped down in the seat beside him and Eddie turned his attention to his friend as he started saying something Richie couldn’t hear.

Richie looked over at the clock and It was time to start class so he instructed the students to get into their groups and get to work right away.

They did and class got started without any other issues for Richie, partly because he refused to look at Eddie.

By the end, Richie had only interacted with Eddie once and that was when he had listened to what he was saying to his group and Richie had agreed with what he was saying.

Richie ended the class a few minutes early and asked everyone to hand their individual papers in. He sat at his desk as they did. When Eddie was handing his in, Richie whispered for him to stay. Eddie smiled but otherwise didn’t acknowledge what Richie had said.

As students left the room, Eddie got up with them and him and Bill walked towards the door. Richie watched him with a confused look until he realized that they were the last two students in the room and Eddie had left his bag at his desk. Eddie had stopped at the door and leaned against it, again saying something to Bill that Richie couldn’t hear.

Bill rolled his eyes at whatever Eddie had said, looked across the room and Richie and then turned and left. Eddie pushed the door shut behind him and Richie heard the quiet click of the lock. He put the side of his face in his hand and watched as Eddie walked back over to his desk.

“You were being a little shit today, you know that right.” Richie sighed as Eddie reached his desk and hopped up to sit on the corner.

“How else was I going to get your attention?” Eddie asked, moving his hand to Richie’s shoulder. Richie watched Eddie’s face as Eddie looked at where he was playing with the materials of Richie’s shirt. Neither said anything for a few seconds.

“You don’t have to do anything to get my attention.” Richie said quietly, he waited until Eddie was actually looking at him before continuing.

“You already have it.”

Eddie tilted his head down but kept his eye’s on Richie’s. Both seemed to be looking for something. Eddie had let his hand slid down off of Richie’s shoulder and the two sat there staring at each other for about a minute.

Richie was the one to finally move. He smiled, stood from his chair and started collecting the papers that the students had just handed in. He had only grabbed the first one when Eddie moved his hand back to Richie’s arm. His grip much stronger this time, like it actually had a purpose.

Richie looked down at where Eddie at grabbed a fist full of his shirt and let himself be pulled closer to the younger boy. The side of Richie’s leg bumped his Eddie’s as their lips pressed together.

Richie couldn’t really remember if he had been the one to lean in first of if Eddie had or if it had been a mutual thing but he didn’t really care at the moment because the press of Eddie’s lips against his felt amazing.

Richie lifted his hand to Eddie’s cheek as Eddie tugged on his shirt to move him so he was standing in front of him. Richie placed his other hand on Eddie’s outer thigh as he licked at his bottom lip. Eddie made a surprised sound and grasped at Richie’s waist, almost desperately pulling him closer.

As their mouths moved together, Richie dropped his hand from Eddie’s cheek to his side and Eddie wrapped his arms around Richie’s neck.

Richie pulled his lips away but stayed between Eddie’s legs. He wasn’t 100% when he had gotten there but he wasn’t going to complain about It now.

As Eddie kept pressing soft kisses to Richie’s chin and neck, Richie let his fingertips glide over the top of Eddie’s leg.

“It’s really hard to actually get stuff done around you.” Richie whispered. He lifted one of his hands up to fix a piece of Eddie’s hair that had fallen in front of his face.

“What kind of stuff were you hoping to get done today?” Eddie asked, his mouth moving against the bottom of Richie’s neck.

“Well, I think there’s quite a few things that we need to talk about.” Eddie moved his head back and looked up at Richie confused.

“Wait, so you actually asked me to stay to talk?” Now Richie was starting to get confused.

“Yes? I don’t know how many other professors you’ve done this with but some ground rules definitely need to be set. Plus, if you’re going to be my TA I think we need to talk a bit about that too.” Richie started off sarcastically hoping that Eddie would pick up that he was serious about the rules.

“Oh loads. I’m trying to get one from each of the departments.” Eddie countered, equally as sarcastic. He turned and reached behind him, grabbing a ballpoint pen from the cup on Richie’s desk and turned back, grabbing Richie’s arm. He wrote a number across the palm of Richie’s left hand and then smiled up at him.

“Now you can text me and we can talk about all those rules you want to talk about.”

Richie couldn’t help but smile along with him, it was like his smile was infectious.

“You know you could have just put it in my phone.” Richie said as Eddie leaned his face closer to Richie’s again.

“Yeah. But that’s not as fun.” Eddie pressed their lips together, this time pushing on Richie’s chest to move him away from the desk. Richie took the step back as Eddie hopped down. He pulled away and turned to walk away, leaving Richie staring after him as he stopped at his desk and grabbed his notebook and bag.

Richie kept watching as Eddie crossed the door and stopped at the door.

“Text me tonight, I’ve got something to show you.” Eddie said before he pushed the door open and disappeared behind it.


	9. Chapter 8

Richie collected the papers from his desk shortly after Eddie had left the room, still smiling like an idiot. That meeting had been just as productive as the first one. He still wasn’t any closer to knowing what was actually going on between him and Eddie but at that particular moment, he didn’t really care all that much.

After he had collected all of the papers and slid them into his bag he crossed the room, pulling his phone out of his pocket. What was the expected wait time to text the student that you were hooking up with after getting their number? 

Honestly not a question Richie had ever thought he would be asking himself.

Usually, depending on the person, he would wait until the next day but he wasn’t going to lie to himself, he was really curious about what Eddie wanted to show him that night.

He had just started to type Eddie’s name into his contacts when he reached for the handle of the door. Right as he was going to push it open it was pulled away from him.

Bev barrelled into the room and right into Richie, almost making him drop his phone.

“Jesus Marsh. Where’s the fire?” Richie exclaimed, putting his hands on her shoulders to stop her from excitedly bouncing.

“So I was just coming to get you for lunch and I happen to see a very cute, smug looking boy leaving your room.” Bev looked up at him, a devious look on her face. “Did I just see who I think I just saw.” She asked excitedly.

Richie sighed and dropped his hand from her shoulders. Well, there went trying to keep this a secret. He smiled sheepishly down at her.

“Don’t tell Stan.”

Bev squealed and jumped a little bit.

“Okay, tell me everything. He definitely seemed happy so I’m assuming something good happened and I want to know all about it.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the classroom, bumping the door shut once he was out.

Richie laughed and let himself be dragged through the hallway towards his office where he assumed he would be heavily interrogated for every detail.

Which of course he was right about, Bev insisted on knowing everything. Richie was hesitant at first to tell her anything but his inability to lie to her eventually won out and he told her what had happened between him and Eddie.

“So are you guys, like, a ‘thing’ now?” Bev asked. She had brought enough leftovers from her and Ben’s dinner the night before for both her and Richie and the two were sitting on the floor with the containers spread out between them. Richie leaned back against the wall and looked up at the ceiling.

“I’m not actually sure. We haven’t really gotten into details or anything.” Richie shrugged and rolled his head to look over at Bev. She was looking up at him and eyeing him intently.

“What do you want it to be?” She asked, not dropping the eye contact that they had. Richie looked back up at the ceiling and thought.

What did he want this to be?

What would be worse? If he was dating a student, assuming that Eddie actually wanted to date him, or just sleeping with a student, which he was fairly certain Eddie wanted to do. Neither seemed like a great choice when he thought about it morally, but he didn’t think that he could just go back to how to things were at this point. (Not that he wanted to)

“I guess I’m just okay with whatever he wants to do.” Richie answers, pulling his phone out and finished what he had been doing earlier and adding Eddie’s number to his contacts.

Bev grabbed his hand and looked at the number as he thought and then entered the name ‘Little one’ laughing to himself as he did.

“Oooooh, You’ve already got a number!” Bev held Richie’s hand in front of his face, as if he hadn’t already seen it.

“Yeah I know and he said he wanted to show me something tonight.” Bev dropped his arm as her eye’s widened.

“DUDE! You’re going to get some bomb ass dick pics tonight.” She basically yelled and slapped his arm. Richie laughed and pushed himself off of the floor. The two had been talking for all of his break between classes. He walked over to his desk to start to get the papers he needed for his next class.

“Wait Rich, are you going to be looking at these pictures at my house?” Bev asked, shooting Richie a questioning look.

Richie returned the look and tilted his head to the side.

“You know, because I’m having that thing tonight that you said you were coming to?” Bev prompted, rolling her eyes as the look of recognition passed over Richie’s face.

“…Yes…I did, didn’t I. That get together that I totally didn’t forget about until right now.” Richie flashed her a dopey smile. Bev let out a loud exaggerated sigh.

“I’m not going to stop you if you want to stay home and send dirty pictures to your cute new hook up.” She sighed again and started to pack up the food.

“No, I’m coming, I’ll just tell Eddie not tonight.” Richie grabbed his bag and ruffled Bev’s hair as he passed her on his way to the door. “I’ll see you at 8? And tell Ben I said thanks for the food.” He called as he pushed the door open.

“7!” Bev yelled back from the floor.

On his way to his class, he pulled his phone out and sent Eddie a quick message.

_‘Hey, it’s Richie.’_

As soon as Richie slid his phone back into his pocket he felt it vibrate twice with new messages.

**Little one:** _Richie huh. So that’s what your non-students call you?_

**Little one:** _I think I still like the way Mr. T sounds._

Richie rubbed his eye’s under his glasses and turned his phone on silent before putting it in his bag. Texting Eddie right before the start of a class was probably not the smartest idea. Somehow everything he said sounds sexual to Richie.

~~~

The next two classes went by relatively uneventful. Richie refused to look at his phone, even though he knew for a fact that he had a few new messages from Eddie.

He waited until 5 o’clock rolled around after he had left the classroom and was safely in his truck before taking his phone out of his bag.

**Little one:** _So I was thinking maybe I could come over tonight and show you what I wanted to in person._

**Little one:** _and then we could talk about those ‘rules’ that you wanted to get to._

Richie stared down at the phone speechless for a few seconds. This kid was going to be the death of him. it took another minute before Richie actually replied.

_‘As much as I’m sure I would like that, I can’t tonight. ‘_

Without waiting for a response, Richie tossed his phone into the passenger seat, started his car and headed home. As much as he loved Bev and as much fun as he usually had at the little parties she would throw, he was seriously considering ditching it and taking Eddie up on his offer.

But he knew he would never hear the end of it from her and he had promised to be there, so Eddie and whatever he had planned would have to wait.

Almost as if it were planned, Richie’s phone light up with a new message.

As soon as he hit a red light he grabbed his phone and unlocked it. To his disappointment, it was just a text from Stan asking if he wanted a ride that night to Bev’s. He quickly typed out a sure and put the phone back down.

It wasn’t until Richie was home for about an hour and a half that he got Eddie’s reply.

 **Little one:**   _That’s a shame._

_‘Yeah, I was hoping for a repeat of what happened after class today.’_

Richie typed it out without even thinking and immediately regretted it as soon as he hit send. That was way to forward, wasn’t it?

He had a solid minute of panicking before Eddie responded and Richie was reminded exactly who he was dealing with.

 **Little one:**   _I was hoping for something a little more rated R._

**Little one:** _How long do you have before whatever it is that you’re supposed to be doing tonight?_

Richie looked at the clock at the top of his phone and cursed. Stan said he was going to pick him up around 6:45 and it was 6:30. Knowing Stan, he was going to get there right when he said he would and Richie still had to actually get ready.

_‘Unfortunately about 10 minutes :-(’_

**Little one:** _I don’t know; a lot can happen in 10 minutes. ****_

**Little one:** _Do you have Snapchat or are you too old for that?_

Richie scoffed down at his phone, half offended and half amused.

_‘First off, rude. And second, yes I do have a Snapchat. its ‘trashmouth_tozier’’_

Richie got up from his desk and headed over to his closest, throwing his phone onto his bed as he flipped through his shirts to find something to wear. He pulled out a black v neck and quickly changed before laying down on his bed and scooping his phone up.

 **Little one:**   _Trashmouth?_

_‘Yeah, its a nickname a friend gave me a while ago.’_

Richie remembered the first time Stan had called him a trashmouth when they were younger. He had thought that it was so funny at the time that it was what he referred to himself as quite a bit.

**Little one:** _I’d love to see how dirty your mouth really is._

Richie nearly choked on his spit, as he sat up and stared down at his phone screen. He was about to start typing out an answer when a buzz from the front door called for his attention. of course, Stan had to be as punctual as ever.

Without replying Richie jumped up from his bed and grabbed his jacket and wallet before heading to the door.

Richie put off texting Eddie back during the ride to Bev’s, not wanting to risk Stan looking over and seeing what or who he was texting. He felt his phone go off once during the ride. But still didn’t check it.

It wasn’t until they were actually at the party and Richie could get some space from Stan and after he had said hi to Bev and Ben that he finally took his phone out again. He had a new message and a friend request on Snapchat.

Knowing Eddie, he decided to deal with Snapchat before reading the message.

_EddieKaspbrak added you_

Richie hit the add button and then opened up the message app.

**Little one:** _You should show me sometime._

_‘I think I will.’_

Another message Richie had typed out and sent without really thinking about it. and he didn’t get much time to think about it after because he quickly shut his phone down as Stan sat down in the chair next to him, holding two drinks. Bev followed not far behind, sitting down in Richie’s lap.

Stan held the drink out for Richie but pulled it back when Richie reached his hand out to take it.

“What’s that?” Stan asked, nodding his head towards Richie’s hand and moving his head to get a better look.

Riche opened his hand to himself and Bev and looked down at it.

Shit.

He had completely forgotten about Eddie’s number on his hand. He stared down at his hand for a second trying to think of some excuse. Luckily Bev was a much better lying.

“We were getting coffee this morning and Richie and this girl in line totally hit it off.” She turned to look at Richie and elbowed him with the arm the Stan couldn’t see. “Did you ever end up texting her?”

“Umm, No. I don’t think I’m going to.” Richie shrugged and grabbed the drink from Stan and downing about half of it at once.

“Why not? it’s been a while since you’ve seen anyone, hasn’t it?” Stan leaned back in his seat and sipped his drink. Bev let out a little laugh but stopped when Richie pinched her side.

“I don’t want to hear anything from you considering you’re in a dry spell of about two fucking years.” Richie shot back. Stan rolled his eye’s and stood up.

“Awe Stanley. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hit a sore spot.” Richie called after Stan as he walked away. Bev slid into the spot Stan had just abandoned, laughing.

Bev left shortly after to go host and Richie was left sitting alone. It seemed like a good time to check on the Eddie front.

**Little one:** _Did you get my snap?_

Richie swiped his notifications down and saw that he did have a new snap from Eddie.

_‘Is this something I should be opening in a room full of people?’_

The reply came almost instantly.

**Little one:** _I guess you’ll have to open it and find out ;P_

Richie debated whether or not it was a good idea and in the end, his curiosity won out. He dropped his brightness down too low and looked around to make sure no one was close enough to see whatever was about to pop up on his screen.

He hesitantly clicked on Eddie’s name to open the snap and then let out a little laugh at the picture that showed up.

It was a selfie of Eddie sitting on a couch, the shoulder of someone else was poking into the corner. He was using the heart filter and sticking his tongue out.

Richie quickly took a picture of the room from where he was sitting.

_Well that was super cute and not what I was expecting at all_

Eddie opened it right away and send a reply. It was another selfie, this time he was looking up at the camera with his chin on his hand, and a look on his face that Richie could only describe as seductive.

_Oh, I know what you were expecting. And don’t worry, those are coming later._

With that, Richie stood from his chair and walked to the kitchen to get another drink. Receiving dirty Snapchats in the middle of a party didn’t really sound like the best idea. He would just text Eddie later and say that someone wanted to talk to him so he couldn’t respond.

God this was going to be a long party.


	10. Chapter 9

The first thing Richie did after he had another drink was find Stan and ‘apologize’. Which basically just consisted of Richie following him around and bugging him until he eventually started talking again. By the time Richie had successfully bothered Stan into talking, he was about four or five drinks in and was pretty sure Stan had only given in because he didn’t want a drunk Richie following him around and telling him not to be salty.

At around twelve, Richie drunkenly said bye to Bev and Ben and with the help of Stan made it back to Stan’s car.  

“God Rich, you’re like a giant two year old.” Stan ground out, pushing on Richie’s head to maneuver him into the passenger seat. Once Richie was actually in the seat, Stan headed back into the building to grab his and Richie’s jackets and properly say goodbye to everyone.

Richie had tried to follow him but Stan had locked the door and in his drunken state Richie couldn’t figure out how to get it unlocked. Eventually he gave up on trying to pry the latch open and dug in his pockets for his phone.

He had three new messages, two from Eddie, and one from Bev. The one from Bev was from less than a minute ago so Richie opened that one.

**Beverly Hills:** _Don’t text ‘you know who’ around Stan and don’t do anything stupid tonight._

Richie scoffed down at his phone. What was she talking about, he never did anything stupid. With that thought in mind, Richie left the conversation with Bev and opened the new messages he had gotten from Eddie though out the night. Both had been from about an hour ago.

**Little one:** _Studying is so boring._

**Little one:** _Text me when you get home._

Richie smiled down at his phone. Bev had told him not to text Eddie when Stan was around, and Stan was currently nowhere in sight as he typed out a message.

_‘Just headinig home now’_

Richie turned from his phone when the driver’s side door was pulled open. He locked his phone just as a jacket come flying at his face.

 ~~~

Richie woke up tangled in his bedsheets, a pillow thrown over his face, and a massive headache. He slowly sat up in bed and squinted at the light that came in through the window beside his bed. His blanket slid down his arms as he shifted but he immediately grabbed the blanket again and wrapped it around his shoulders when the cold morning air hit his bare chest. Sometime before he had fallen asleep he has changed into his pajama bottoms. He took a minute to take in his surroundings.

His bed was a complete mess, with half of his comforter on the floor and pillows thrown everywhere. A half empty bottle of water was on his bedside table. He reached over and chugged what was left as he looked around for his phone.

He eventually found it under one of his pillows but when he went to turn it on the dead battery sign popped up.

“Fucking great.” He mumbled as he leaned over the side of his bed to grab the phone charger. He plugged in the phone and then stood from the bed, keeping the blanket wrapped around himself as he made his way into the kitchen. Coffee on mornings after a lot of drinking were one of Richie’s favorite hangover cures.

When he got to the cupboard where he normally kept the instant coffee, he reached up and grabbed the box.

“Come fucking on.” Richie dropped the empty box on the counter and stomped over to his closet. Grabbing a pullover hoodie, his wallet, glasses, and keys to his house, Richie left his place and headed for the coffee shop across from his building.

The few strange looks he got as he crossed the street were a lot less then he was expecting to get with the way he looked.

As if Ninja turtle’s pajamas and an old hoodie with ‘your mom’ printed on the front in fancy handwriting wasn’t quite enough. Richie caught a glimpse of himself in a parked car window and his already naturally messy hair was a complete disaster. All he was missing was a bright pair of crocks and Richie was pretty sure he would make it on the cover of ‘People of Walmart’ easily.

The barista gave in a slightly confused look before going back to the weirdly cheery persona that all people that served coffee seemed to be required to have.

With a large coffee and a chocolate muffin in hand, Richie crossed the street back to his building. He had spent enough time looking like the neighborhood crazy person for one day.

Once he was back at his place, he headed straight back to his bed to curl up and try not to slowly die. It took him about twenty minutes to finish his breakfast and start to feel like an actual human again. After he took his last sip of coffee he reached over and grabbed his phone, holding the button and waiting for it to turn on.

It was then that Richie got the first snip bit of memory from the night before.

He had been talking to Eddie right?

Oh god. what had he said to Eddie that night.

As soon as the phone booted up, Richie immediately went into his messages to assess the damages. To his surprise, he hadn’t actually said anything that bad, though text at least. The only text that he had sent that alarmed him was one that he had sent at around one that said 

‘Im goin calll you’

Richie opened the phone app and wanted to throw his phone and then himself out the window.

He facetimed Eddie at one in the morning…for almost an hour… and he didn’t remember anything he had said or done during it.

Putting the small heart attack that he was currently going through on pause, Richie opened the other concerning app. He had two unopened snaps. One from Bev and one from Eddie.

A little nervous to see what Eddie had sent, Richie opened Bev’s first. it was a picture of Bev’s open fridge. ‘look what you did…” Was typed out across the top.

It took Richie a second to see what was wrong and he laughed when he realized what she was talking about. Everything in the fridge had been flipped upside down. various jars and containers were carefully balanced and it seemed Richie had flipped everything.

He took a picture of himself with his hand covering half his face and said that he would come over later and fix it.

With nothing else to procrastinate with, Richie clicked on Eddie’s name and watched the picture pop up. it was from 2:50 and it was a selfie of Eddie lying in bed. He looked like he was spread out across the bed and with the ample amount of neck and chest exposed, it was a pretty safe bet to make that he was at least shirtless. The smile that stretched out on his face made Richie smile too, until he read the text at the bottom of the picture

“Well that was fun, but you need to go to sleep.”

Oh no.

Well that was probably one of the worst messages Richie could have gotten while trying to see if he had done anything stupid the night before, and it wasn’t that doing stuff with Eddie was particularly stupid (Not to him at least.) but doing stuff drunk and not remembering was.

There was no way he could just text Eddie and ask, that would be extremely embarrassing. And what if it hurt Eddie’s feelings.

Fuck he was an idiot.

After about an hour of pacing and trying to remember what had happened, Richie gave up and decided to try and get some actual work done. He changed into jeans and a less offensive hoodie and left for the university.

It took a little bit but eventually, Richie lost himself in reading students writing. The distraction from his weird love life. Love life? Or would it be sex life? Whatever it was, the distraction was nice and Richie worked for about an hour before getting a snap from the thing he was trying to be distracted from.

He wanted to see what the younger boy had sent but also didn’t. His natural curiosity won out and he opened the snap after taking a second to prepare for any embarrassment that was coming.

It was a selfie of Eddie sitting in a café, Richie was pretty sure it was the place Bill worked but he wasn’t certain. Eddie looked extremely cute that day, but Richie was starting to think that cute was just a permanent state Eddie seemed to stay in.

Eddie had written ‘So bored’ around his face in impressively neat loopy writing for something done on Snapchat.

Richie swiped left on Eddie’s name and opened up their chat history. He cringed when he scrolled up and saw how many snaps had been sent between the two that he had completely no memory of.

The little Eddie bitmoji popped up in the bottom corner, signaling that Eddie was currently looking at the chat, probably waiting for Richie to say something. Not wanting to make it weird, Richie typed out the first thing that came to mind.

‘ _studying?’_

It wasn’t really all that exciting or smooth but Eddie started typing right away so Richie figured it was good enough.

‘ _Yep. Bill’s working and I already went for my morning run, what are you up to?’_

Hmm, Richie didn’t know that Eddie went for runs. But he guessed there was a lot that he didn’t know about the other.

‘ _Marking papers, real exciting stuff.’_

_‘Want me to come make it more exciting?’_

Richie laughed down at his phone. So whatever he had done last night hadn’t been bad enough that Eddie wanted to call this whole thing off, that was a good start.

‘ _I don’t know, its pretty boring. And I’ve told you before that it’s hard to get stuff done when you’re around.’_

_‘Well technically I am your TA this semester so shouldn’t we get used to working together?’_

Well he had him there. He thought about it for a few seconds. Eddie was right, if he was going to be helping him mark stuff then they actually did have to work together, unless Richie wanted to be one of those professors that dumps all the marking on the TA and expects them to do everything and that wasn’t really his style.

‘ _Okay. A318 but if you come here we’re actually working!’_

Eddie didn’t send anything back and after waiting a few minutes Richie closed down Snapchat and went back to marking. If Eddie actually showed up he would deal with everything then.

It was another ten minutes until Richie heard the quiet knock on his door. He jumped out of his desk chair and definitely didn’t run over to the door to open it.

Eddie stood on the other side when he pulled the door open, looking as cute as he had in his selfie.

“Well hello there sir, reporting for duty.” Eddie said jokingly, giving a little salute as he stepped closer towards Richie.

Richie moved his hand up to touch him but stopped when he realized that some one could walk down the hallway and see them. Instead he stepped backwards and to the side, gesturing for Eddie to come in. He did and Richie closed the door behind him.

“So this is your office, huh” Eddie was facing away from him at the moment but Richie was pretty sure he was doing that smirk that he did sometimes.

“Yep.” Richie stepped up behind him and put his hand on Eddie’s waist. He reached his other hand past Eddie to the desk and grabbed a small stack of papers.

“And here.” He lightly pushed on Eddie’s side. Eddie easily moved where he was being maneuvered and let his legs give out when the seat of a chair hit his legs. Richie put the papers down in front of him and pressed a light kiss to the side of Eddie’s neck. “Is where you can work.”

Eddie turned and looked up at Richie, confusion mixed with a hint of annoyance passes his face.

“Just highlight, what the student said was the main idea and any other part that you find interesting.” Richie instructed as he rounded the desk and sat back down in his chair. Eddie was still staring over at him, as Richie grabbed a highlighter from his desk and placed it in front of Eddie, laughing. “I told you, if you’re coming up here, we’re working.”

“Yeah I just figured we could do some other stuff before getting to the actual work part.” Eddie mumbled as he put the cap in his mouth and pulled it off of the highlighter.

“Or maybe we could talk about those rules, because you started to yesterday but got a little distracted.” Eddie continued a little louder. The smile on Richie face immediately dropped.

Well it wasn’t going to get any easier the longer he waited.

“Actually Eddie, about last night, um I don’t know if you noticed but I was kinda drunk.”

Eddie cut him off by letting out laugh. He quickly covered his mouth with his hand.

“Kinda?” He asked though his fingers. Richie rubbed at the back of his neck.

“Yeah. So maybe really drunk. And I don’t really remember what happened last night.” Richie got quieter as he spoke. He probably sounded so dumb. When he looked up Eddie had an amused look on his face, which really wasn’t what Richie had been expecting.

“So, you’re saying you don’t remember anything you did last night?” Eddie asked slowly, sliding forward out of his chair and dragging his fingers against the desk as he rounded it. Richie looked up at him as he came to a stop in front of him.

“You don’t remember any of the things you said to me?” He asked as he leaned down closer to Richie’s ear. Richie could feel his face heating up.

Oh God, there was so many things that he could have said, like the list was literally endless. Not knowing what to say, Richie simply nodded his head.

“Well, I could try to help remind you.” Eddie whispered into Richie’s ear, letting his lips lightly touch Richie’s neck, in almost the same place as Richie had earlier.

“Eddie…” Richie tried to sound authoritative, but the soft sound he made as Eddie kissed across his neck basically destroyed any hope of that.

Attempting to take back some kind of control of the situation, Richie raised his hand up to Eddie’s sides, pulling him closer by the fabric of his shirt.

Eddie took a step forward as he continued to kiss his way to Richie’s lips. When Eddie pressed their lips together, Richie used the grip he already had to pull him down onto his lap. The chair squeaked under them as Eddie settled on Richie’s legs.

Eddie moved his hands to hold Richie’s shoulders as he pressed his tongue against his bottom lip. Eddie hummed contently when Richie deepened the kiss by opening his mouth and basically letting Eddie do whatever he wanted.

While Eddie focused on Richie’s lips, Richie lowered his hands from Eddie’s sides to his outer thighs, shifting him closer so that their chests were touching. When Richie felt his dick press against Eddie’s he dropped his head and let out a quiet moan.

“Fuck Eddie.” Richie whispered, lowering his eye’s to look at Eddie’s lips which were kiss swollen and red. Richie watched as Eddie’s lips spread into a smile and suddenly Eddie was sitting in his lap laughing.

Richie stared up at the younger boy, completely dumbfounded. It was a solid minute before Eddie had stopped laughing enough to talk.

“Sorry, sorry. It’s just yesterday, you didn’t do anything bad. You called me at one and wanted to talk about some joke book you had when you were younger and then gave me a thirty-minute house tour of you one room apartment.” Eddie laughed from above Richie, who was staring up at him in complete embarrassment.

“So I didn’t try to send you dirty pictures or anything?” Richie asked.

“Nope, you just asked me to send you selfies and then you’d send back like, three messages about how cute I was.” Eddie smiled and quickly kissed Richie. “It was pretty funny.”

“Oh god, that’s almost worse. I’m so sorry.” Richie hid as much of his face behind his hand as he could.

“It’s fine, like I said, It was pretty funny.” Eddie laughed again as he stepped down from Richie’s lap. He walked back around the table and plopped down in the chair as Richie watched him confused. Eddie started laughing again when he saw Richie’s face.

“You said you wanted to work right?” He asked innocently, as if he hadn’t just been sitting in Richie’s lap.

Richie stared for a few seconds before huffing out a breath and shaking his head, a smile growing on his face.

“Yeah, I did. So you start on that pile and let me know if you need help with anything.” Richie grabbed another highlighter for himself and popped the top off as he looked up and saw Eddie smiling across the table at him before picking up the highlighter Richie had given him earlier and start underlining things on the paper in front of him.


	11. Chapter 10

To Richie’s surprise, the two worked for about an hour and a half in relative silence. A few times he had even forgotten Eddie was there. The occasional squeak in Eddie’s chair when he shifted or the soft sound of his pen running across the paper he was looking at would pull Richie to look over at him and smile.

Richie stretched as he finished the last paper in his pile and set his highlighter down. Looking across he saw Eddie only had a few left to do. He reached over and grabbed the paper from the top of the ‘done’ pile and read some of the lines Eddie had highlighted. He read over the top couple of papers and by the time he was on the third one, Eddie had finished the ones he still had left.

“All done.” Eddie said as he picked up his pile and handed them across the desk to Richie. “Can we do something not so school related now?”

Richie laughed and took the paper from him, adding them to his stack.

“We have been working pretty hard, what did you have in mind?” Richie stood from his chair, leaning on the desk and crossing his arms.

“Oh, I’ve got a lot of things in mind.” Eddie stood too and wasted no time joining their mouths together. Richie laughed against his lips and placed a hand on his waist. Eddie wrapped his arms around Richie’s neck and used that to spin them around.

Eddie ran his hands from around Richie’s neck down to his chest, where he pushed lightly until Richie was basically sitting on the desk. Eddie pulled back a little, moving his hands from Richie’s chest and taking both of his wrists.

Once he had both placed them on the desk on either side of Richie’s hips.

“No moving.” Eddie whispered as he looked up at Richie, that sly smile growing. Richie swallowed the lump in his throat and nodded slowly. He wasn’t sure where this was going but he definitely wasn’t going to fight it.

Eddie let go of Richie’s wrists and waited a second to make sure they would stay there. When he was confident that Richie wouldn’t remove them, he lifted his hands back up to where they had been on Richie’s chest. He pushed himself up and pressed his lips back to Richie’s.

Right as Richie was starting to get used to the feeling of kissing Eddie, he Started to move lower, mouthing over Richie’s chin and the parts of his neck that he could reach.

Richie’s eye’s closed as he found himself getting lost in the soft press of Eddie’s lips on his skin. So lost that he didn’t feel Eddie moving his hands down his body until they were making their way under his hoodie.

At the hot touch of Eddie’s fingers on his stomach, Richie almost moved his hands up from the desk to hold on to any part of Eddie that he could reach but stopped when he opened his eyes and was met with Eddie’s. There was a spark of challenge in his dark brown eyes and Richie was determined to beat him in whatever this little game was that he wanted to play.

Richie rotated his hands and grabbed onto the edge of the desk, cocking an eyebrow down at Eddie.

Eddie smiled up at him as he broke away from Richie’s neck and used his hands to push Richie’s hoodie up as much as could. Richie shivered as the cold air of his office hit his bare skin. He shivered even harder when Eddie dropped himself lower and pressed a kiss to the bottom of his ribcage.

Richie watched as Eddie slowly made his way lower, until he was on his knees in front of him. the urge to run his fingers through Eddie’s hair almost took over until he noticed the small smile on Eddie’s lips as he pressed them against Richie’s stomach. That smile fueled the want to win in Richie and he tightened his grip on his desk.

When Eddie moved his fingers to hold onto the waist of Richie’s jeans, Richie turned his head sideways, looking away. The more he looked at Eddie, the more he wanted to touch him.

In his attempted to not look down at him, Richie focused on the desk beside him, or more, what was on the desk. Eddie had left his phone on the desk and he was currently receiving a call. Richie crocked his neck to read the name.

“Who’s Sonia?” He asked without thinking. He felt Eddie freeze against him and tilt his head up to look at Richie confused.

“What?”

Richie looked back at the phone and the call had timed out. Eddie’s home screen showed a whole bunch of missed calls and texts from ‘Sonia’.

“Girlfriend?” Richie asked jokingly as Eddie stood from his knees and grabbed at his phone. Richie started to panic slightly when instead of answering him, Eddie unlocked his phone and seemed to be reading the missed texts.

“Eddie?” Richie asked after a minute or so of silence. Eddie looked up from his phone at Richie, he looked infinitely more stressed then he had before he grabbed his phone.

“Sorry. It’s my mom.” Richie felt himself physically relax at Eddie’s words. He wrapped his arm around Eddie’s side and pulled him closer, pressing a kiss to his temple.

“Is she hot?” Richie laughed when Eddie lightly elbowed him in the stomach.

“Kidding, Kidding. Some kind of emergency?” He asked as he watched Eddie type a message.

“With my mom, everything is an emergency. I have to go” Eddie looked up from his phone and stretched up to lightly kiss Richie. “Maybe we could continue this back at your place sometime?”

“Maybe. I’ll text you tonight?” Richie kissed Eddie back and then turned to reach beside the desk for Eddie bag. He held it out for him as Eddie shoved his phone into his pocket.

“You better.” With one last look, Eddie grabbed his bag, pushed away from Richie and headed for the door. Richie watch as he left, smiling after him. as soon as Eddie had shut the door, Richie put his forehead in his hand.

He had just unintentionally cockblocked himself.

He shook his head as he turned back to his desk and grabbed the stack of papers. He slid them into a drawer and gather up his stuff to head home. With Eddie’s help, he had gotten all of his work done in about half the time that he had anticipated it would take. Now he could go home and enjoy the rest of his Saturday doing nothing.

He held that thought until he checked his phone. He hadn’t bothered to check it since Eddie had gotten there and apparently in that amount of time he had missed 23 calls. 12 were from his mom and 8 from his younger sister, but it was the 3 from Stan that really confused him.

Grabbing his bag and car keys, Richie pressed on Stan’s missed call and held the phone to his ear as it rang. By the time Richie had reached his car Stan still hadn’t picked up the phone. He jumped into the car and speed off home, if he was going to have to deal with some kind of family thing he would rather do it in the comfort of his apartment.

He parked his car and pulled out his phone again. As he unlocked the door to the building he opened up the messenger app and typed out a message to Eddie.

‘ _Everything okay?”_

The bubbles indicating Eddie was typing popped up as Richie put his key into the door to his place. Once he had the door open he dropped his bag down beside the entryway and headed for his bed.

“So you do still have a working phone?”

A voice coming from his couch almost made him drop his phone. Richie looked up and saw his younger sister sitting on his couch, resting her elbows on the back of the couch, looking up at him.

“Sierra?” Richie questioned as she stood and walked over to him, crossing her arms in front of her. He hadn’t seen her since the last time he had been home, which would have been close to a year ago. She still looked the same. Everyone had always told Richie that he and his sister looked so much alike, with the dark curls, dark eye, and pale skin.

“I’ve been calling you for like two hours.” She rolled her eye’s continued to glare up at him.

“Yeah, I was just going to call you back. What are you doing here?”

“You’re not even going to say hi?” The strict look melted away from her face as Richie held his arms out and she jumped forward into them, wrapping her arms around his neck.

Eventually, Sierra pushed away and skipped back to the couch. She sat down and excitedly gestured for Richie to come sit with her. He looked down at his phone and then slid it into his pocket as he joined her.

“Okay, so first things first, what are you doing here? Does mom know where you are?” Richie asked as soon as he was sitting. Sierra stared at him confused before rolling her eyes again and laughing.

“So you were being serious about being surprised to see me.” She laughed again when Richie slowly nodded his head. “Mom said she emailed you like two weeks ago. Do you just never check your emails?”

Richie vaguely remembered getting an email from his mom that he meant to read but had forgotten about.

“Um, no I completely remember it. could you just refresh my memory on what it said?” Richie flashed her a cheesy smile and stood from the couch, turning to head over to the kitchen. He turned his head to listen when she started talking again.

“Mom email you to ask If I could stay here for a couple of weeks so I can attend some meetings with school representatives about getting a full ride scholarship here.”  She explained, leaning over the armrest to watch as Richie moved stuff around in the kitchen.

“You got a scholarship here? Wait mom let you come out here without knowing if I said it was okay or not?” Richie put down the box he was holding and raised his eyebrow at her. She mimicked the smile he had used earlier.

“I might have told her you called me and said it was okay. And I might have one, but I need to go to these meetings.” She looked up at him for a second before jumping off the couch and cross the room to the kitchen.

“Please Rich. Pleeeeaasssseee. I’ll never ask you for anything again, this is like one of the best Arts programs around, and I really want to go here!” She stopped in front of him and laced her fingers together in front of her face, looking up at him with pleading eyes. He ran his hand through his hair and looked around his apartment.

“I don’t really have a room for you Si.”

“I can sleep on the couch!” She countered, pouting her lip out further. He sighed as he looked down at her.

“Yeah, okay, fine. But could you please call mom and tell her you’re fine, she’s left me like 25 messages.” Sierra squealed and jumped up to hug Richie again. She nodded when she let go of him and pulled out her phone.

He watched her for a second and sighed again. Taking out his phone as well, he saw Eddie had replied with two new messages.

**Little one:** _Yeah, she was just overreacting as usual._

**Little one:** _Still down to continue tonight?_

Richie cursed under his breath and responded.

“ _Sorry, family thing came up, I’ll talk to you later.”_

He locked his phone just as Sierra stepped up in front of him. Richie looked back at the mess he had started to make on the kitchen counter.

“Okay, I don’t feel like cooking anymore so we’re going out for dinner, where ever you want to go.” He said as he started putting stuff away. Once he had everything away he grabbed his wallet from his bag and held the door open for her.

“Hey, how did you get in here anyways?” He asked as he looked at the lock on the door. It didn’t look like it was broken or tampered with.

She laughed at his confused face.

“I’ve got my ways.” She smiled as she walked past him. He took a second to look after her before pulling the door to his apartment shut behind him.


	12. Chapter 11

It was different having someone else living at his place, even if it was just his little sister. Not good or bad, but different. 

He had spent the last week hanging out with her, watching movies at the apartment, touring around the school and going to restaurants with Bev.

Sierra and Bev had click instantly, similarly to how she and Richie had. Their love of weird art stuff left Richie feeling like a third wheel sometimes when the three of them were together.

All and all, the week as a whole had been really good. The only thing Richie wasn’t too happy about was the number of times he had seen Eddie.

Richie had explained what was happening over the phone the first night after Sierra had fallen asleep. And Eddie, although kinda bummed, understood.

Other then class, they’d gotten together a few times in Richie’s office. unfortunately, for the most part, all they did was work. Correcting papers or creating future tests for Richie’s other classes.

The after class meetings weren’t always just work but to Richie’s frustration they never really got any further then they had already. It wasn’t that just making out with Eddie wasn’t amazing, because it was. It really was. The frustrating part was every time one of them would try to take the next step, something would happen that would either kill the mood or force one of them to leave.

Eddie’s mom was one of the more frequent culprits. Richie had learned over the past couple of weeks that Eddie’s mom was kind of insane. kind of really insane. She would call or text him almost once every hour.

Although their actual meetings had been to a minimum, the two had almost made up for it in texting and Snapchatting. Basically, every time they weren’t together or Richie was teaching a class the two were talking in some way.

At first, it had just been a lot of Eddie’s flirty innuendos with Richie struggling to think of responses that didn’t make him seem extremely eager, which he mostly failed at. But eventually, it turned into the two of them really getting to know each other. Staying up late talking about the past, future plans, personal stuff.

There was still plenty of flirting between them, and Richie was still positive that Eddie was going to be the death of him, but the more they talked, the more he was kind of okay with that.

~~~

It was the Thursday of Sierra’s last entry meeting and Richie had just finished his last class of the day. He absentmindedly went through the topics for the next week of classes as he waited for her in his office. As distracted as he was in finding out if she got in or not the thing that was concerning him even more was the fact that Eddie hadn’t messaged him since that morning.

Which was stupid of him to care about since Eddie didn’t have any obligation to text him or anything, they still hadn’t really put a label on whatever it was that they were, but it just wasn’t really like Eddie to completely disappear like he currently was.

God, he was acting like some overbearing boyfriend.  

His thoughts immediately went to the worst place. what if Eddie didn’t want to talk to him anymore or what if his mom had somehow found out about them, or one of the several other disastrous scenarios Richie had come up with.

The door to Richie’s office being slammed open broke him from his thoughts as Sierra trampled into the room and tackled him in his chair.

“I got in!” she yelled as she hugged him. Richie put his unsolicited thoughts aside and hugged her back.

“That’s amazing.” He stood from his chair with her still bouncing happily beside him and pulled his phone out.  “I’m going to call Bev, we have to go out and celebrate.”

Just as Richie unlocked his phone the door to his office was swung open again.

“I really ne-“ Eddie froze when he noticed someone else in the room. Richie could tell something was off with him just by the way his face looked.

“Sorry, I should have knocked.”  He said quietly as he started to pull the door shut.

“It’s okay. Sierra this is Eddie. Eddie this is my sister Sierra.” Richie quickly cut in, not wanting Eddie to leave. He moved from behind his desk and crossed his office, stopping beside Eddie and putting his hand on the door.

With his face looking away from Sierra he shot Eddie a questioning look. Eddie countered it with a clearly fake smile, which he turned away from Richie and towards Sierra.

“Hi.” He said in a tone that Richie could still tell was being extremely forced. Sierra had followed behind Richie and smiled back at Eddie.

“Hey. Are you a student here?” She asked warmly. Eddie nodded and kept his face turned away from Richie.

“Awesome! I’m going to be a student here too.” Her smile grew as she spoke. Richie still hadn’t looked away from Eddie, trying to see behind the fake persona he was putting on. He held out his phone towards Sierra.

“Hey, can you go in the hall and call Bev. Tell her the good news, I’ll be right out.” Richie instructed as she took the phone. she nodded as she passed Eddie. As soon as her back was turned and she was fully out In the hallway, Richie closed the door behind her.

Eddie had watched her leave and was staring at the close door. Richie sidestepped, putting himself in-between the door and Eddie. 

When Eddie still didn’t look up at him, he placed his hands on both sides of Eddie’s neck and bent down so that they were at the same eye level.

“Hey, what’s going on?” He asked softly, stroking his thumb along Eddie’s jaw. Eddie finally looked at him. Neither did anything for a few seconds until Eddie leaned over and lightly pressed his lips to Richie’s.

Richie was still seriously worried but he pushed back, pulling Eddie slightly closer.

Eddie moved away, smiling up at Richie with a somewhat more believable smile.

“Sorry, I should have called or something. You’ve still got family stuff going on. I’ll text you later.” Eddie quickly muttered as he tried to move around Richie, who was having none of that.

“Eddie.” He dropped his hands to his shoulder, keeping him there and raising his eyebrow expectedly. Eddie took in his face, but instead of talking like Richie wanted he just flashed the not convincing smile again.

“Seriously, It’s not that important. I’ll just tell you about it later.” This time Eddie managed to maneuver out of Richie’s grip and grab hold of the door handle.

Richie unwillingly let go of Eddie’s arm and stepped back as Eddie pulled the door open.

Sierra was leaning against the opposite wall, still on the phone. She looked up and smiled as Eddie hurriedly walked past her. Richie took a step out into the hallway and watched as Eddie disappeared around the corner. He was seriously debating running after him when he heard Sierra saying goodbye over the phone, he turned towards her as she held the phone out to him.

“Bev wants us to come pick her up, everything okay?” she asked when Richie turned to look back down the hall at where Eddie had just been.

‘Ah, yeah. Let’s go.” He said after a few seconds of silence. The two headed down the hallway in the opposite direction of Eddie, towards the staff parking lot.

“So, he was super cute.” She commented once they were in the elevator. Richie almost eagerly agreed out loud but stopped himself before he spoke. Instead, he just replayed with a nonchalant hum. Richie could see she was watching him from the corner of his eye.

“Think he’s single?” She asked, rocking back and forth on her feet. Richie almost slipped again. But mumbled a quiet, “How would I know.”

The rest of the elevator ride was quiet, with the drive over to Bev being filled with Sierra excitedly talking about how the next year would go and where she would live and how fun it would be for the two of them to live close to each other.

Richie nodded along, agreeing every now and then, but ultimately his thoughts were still on Eddie. something had definitely been off, and Richie really didn’t want to wait to find out what. One because he was still really worried and also because it seemed to be something that was affecting Eddie in a bad way.

Bev was waiting on the step to her apartment when they got to her place and she quickly jumped up and ran over to the car, throwing open the passenger seat and pulling Sierra out of the car.

Richie watched confused as she dragged Sierra back to the building and yelled over her shoulder that they would be back soon. Richie was going to yell something back but they had already disappeared behind the front door before he could register what had happened.

He resigned to waiting in the car and pulled out his phone as he waited. Without even thinking about it, he pulled up his messenger app and clicked on Eddie’s name.

_‘What’s going on.’_

He typed out and sent. Hoping that Eddie would get back to him.

After waiting about ten minutes for either Eddie to respond or Bev and Sierra to show up, both happened at about the same time.

The typing bubbles popped up on Richie’s phone just as the front door to Bev’s apartment opened. Richie lowered his phone as he watched Bev and Sierra walking out of the apartment, both dressed like they were about to go clubbing.  

“What the fuck are you guys wearing, I said we were going to dinner.” Richie yelled out the window as the got closer. Bev laughed as she slid into the passenger’s seat.

“Yeah, dinner and then we’re going somewhere to really celebrate.” She pulled the door shut and looked over at Richie determinedly. He looked at her and then turned in his seat to look at Sierra, who had an almost identical look.

With both of them looking at him, he quickly looked down at his phone and saw Eddie’s response.

**Little One:** _Later._

Was all it said, He sighed as he pressed down on the gas. Bev dug open the console and pulled out the few CDs Richie kept in there. After some debating with Sierra, she popped in the 80s playlist that she had made and forced Richie to keep in the car.

“You know I have work tomorrow right?” He commented over the music as he drove, following the directions Bev called out to him.

“Like you haven’t gone to work hungover before. Turn right.” She rolled her eye’s, looked to the back seat and winking.

Richie stared as he pulled into the parking lot Bev had told him to. It was an old building, the front looked like the kind of local restaurant that he and Bev usually went to but the building seemed to be divided in half, and the other half had a neon sign that read ‘The Palomino.”

“So you’re planning on taking my eighteen-year-old sister to a nightclub?” Richie looked up at the sign as he jumped out of the car and opened the back door for Sierra.

“Don’t worry. I know the owner and he said it was fine.” Bev replied from the other side of the car. She wrapped her arm around Sierra and lead her towards the restaurant side. Sierra turned to face Richie as they walked.

“C’mon Rich, It’ll be fun! Besides, I know for a fact you used to do stuff like this all the time when you were underage.” She said reaching back, grabbing Richie’s arm and pulling him to walk beside them.

“Yeah yeah. That doesn’t mean I want you doing it.” Richie kept a straight face until they got to the door. If he was going to be forced to be here, he might as well have fun with it.

~~~

About halfway through dinner, Richie had tried to call Stan to see if he wanted to come out. He doubted he would but he didn’t get to find out because Stan didn’t pick up.

He tried him two more times before they headed to the club part of the building, both unanswered.

It had taken a bit of convincing but eventually, Richie had bought the three of them a round of drinks.

Sierra and Bev were currently dancing in the middle of the dancefloor. Richie had been out with them but had recently left to go get another drink.

Richie leaned back against the bar as he sipped on his drink. Over the loud music, Richie couldn’t hear his phone ringing in his pocket, but he could just slightly feel it. He pulled it out, thinking it was Stan getting back to him. He didn’t really expect it to be Eddie but it, to his surprise, was.

He downed what was left of his drink and headed towards the smoking area, which although not by much, would be slightly quieter.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on?” Richie asked into the phone once he was outside. He still had to keep one hand over his other ear to hear Eddie but he faintly could.

“I miss you.” Eddie whined. Richie moved further away from the crowd of people outside. Eddie’s voice was a little higher than usual and he was almost slurring his words. Richie could hear people in the background talking, so he assumed Eddie was somewhere in public.

“Where are you?” Richie asked, somewhat panicked. He still remembered how something was definitely wrong with Eddie earlier and if he was this drunk that means it was probably worse then Richie had thought.

“I’m at a bar. Where are you?” Eddie giggled as he spoke.

“Eddie, what bar are you at, I’m going to come get you.” Richie spoke slowly, feeling himself sobering up.

“I’ll text it to you.” Eddie said happily as he hung up. Richie tried to talk but was cut off by the beep.

Shit. Richie made his way back into the club, using his height as an advantage to look around the club of Bev and Sierra.

He eventually spotted Bev’s bright red hair standing by the bathrooms. He bee-lined towards her, pushing past a few people to get there.

“I have to go. Somethings going on with Eddie.” He spoke quickly, as Bev watched him confused. It took her a few seconds but then she was nodding.

“Go. I’ll get Ben to come get us, or we’ll cab. Sierra can sleep at my place tonight if you need?”

“Yeah, tell her I’ll come get her tomorrow.” Richie looked down at his phone and saw that Eddie had actually texted him an address. He threw an arm around Bev and hugged her quickly. “Thanks”

He rushed out of the club, entering the address Eddie had sent him into Google Maps as he walked. He took off as soon as he was in his car.

The address Eddie had sent wasn’t too far from where Richie had been so it didn’t take him to long to get there. The place was called The Toad. Richie had heard of it, it was pretty famous for having extremely cheap drinks and extremely sketchy patrons.  

As Richie pulled up in front of the old building he saw Eddie leaning against the side of it, talking to a small group of people. Right as Richie opened his car door, Eddie spotted him and pushed away from the wall.

“Hey there, Mr. T.” Eddie whispered as he threw his arms around Richie’s shoulder. Richie put an arm around Eddie’s waist as he walked them to the other side of his truck. He pulled the door open and held it for Eddie, who was putting up somewhat of a protest.

“C’mon Eddie, we’re going to my place.” Richie said sternly. Eddie stopped moving and stared up at him. Richie knew that look. That was Eddie’s mischievous look. 

Great.

With that Eddie quietly got into the truck, shut the door and stared out at Richie, waiting for him to get in. Richie rubbed at his forehead as he rounded the front of the truck.

Tonight was going to suck.

As soon as Richie had gotten into the driver’s seat, Eddie leaned his head across the console and rested it on Richie’s shoulder.

“Sorry. You were with your sister, weren’t you?” Eddie asked quietly, looking straight ahead out of the window. Richie turned and looked down at him.

“Yeah, but that’s okay. Can you please tell me what’s going on?” Richie tried as he pulled out onto the road. He was 100% convinced that something had happened today now. Eddie dropped his eye’s to look down at the radio system.

“I can’t tell you.” He said after a few seconds. Richie looked down at him again, this time not asking anything else. Obviously whatever it was was bothering him and if he didn’t want to talk about it then, then Richie wouldn’t force him to.

Neither said anything as Richie drove. Eventually, Eddie reached forward and turned the radio on, it was still set to the CD Bev had put on earlier. Richie moved one of his hands away from the wheel of the car and wrapped his arm around Eddie, pulling him as close as he could with the console between them as the beginning of Africa started to play.

Eddie quietly hummed along as they made their way back to Richie’s place.

The song ended as Richie pulled into the parking lot for his apartment block. He jumped out of the truck as soon as it was parked and went to open the door for Eddie.

Eddie swayed as he hopped down from the truck, and leaned into Richie as they walked to the side door of the apartment building.

The walk up to Richie’s place was quiet. Eddie clung onto the front of Richie’s shirt as Richie pulled his keys out of his back pocket and unlocked his door.

He pushed the door open and helped Eddie get inside. Instead of focusing on walking Eddie looked around the room.

“So this is your place.” He asked.

“Yep.” Richie answered as he practically dragged Eddie through the room towards the bed. Once they were beside it he pushed on Eddie’s shoulders until he was sitting on the edge. Eddie plopped down and looked up at Richie.

“Straight to it then?” Eddie asked as he reached up and grabbed the bottom of Richie’s shirt. Richie flailed his arms in the air and took a huge step backwards with his arms still in the arm.

“Absolutely not. You’re going to sleep.” 

Richie, keeping his hands in the air took a step to the side and reached down to open one of his draws, he pulled out an old T-shirt and pair of pajama pants as Eddie watched with a furrowed brow.

Richie stood back up and held the pile of clothes out to Eddie. Eddie blinked up at him a few times before grabbing the bottom of his own shirt and pulling it up and over his head. Richie held out the shirt and Eddie took it and pulled it on.

Richie had to look away when Eddie looked back up at him because God, he was so cute. He was looking up at Richie with an almost innocent look that, knowing him, Richie was pretty sure he was faking. His hair had gotten all messed up from pulling the shirt on and his cheeks were a light pink color from the drinking.

Richie kept looking away when he heard Eddie rustling around and he assumed he was taking off his pants. When the sound stopped Richie held out the pajamas, expecting Eddie to take them.

“No thanks, this is good.” Eddie stood from the bed and Richie couldn’t help but look.

The T-shirt had been an old one of Richie’s oversized band shirts, and it was pretty big on Richie. It completely swallowed Eddie.

The neck hung down, exposing one of Eddie’s shoulders, the sleeves dropped to just above his elbows and the hem stopped about halfway down his thighs.

Richie stared, basically mesmerized. This had been such a brilliantly stupid idea.

He snapped out of it when Eddie took a step towards him. He held the pajamas out to Eddie and jumped away from the bed.

“Wait here.” He said as he backed away towards the kitchen. Turning the corner, once Richie was out of Eddie’s sight he dropped his head down onto the kitchen counter.

He was going to have to be really careful navigating this situation. There was no way he would be able to live with himself if the first time they did anything Eddie was completely trashed. And Eddie was going to make getting through the night without that happening super hard. Just seeing him in his shirt made Richie want to jump him.

He took a couple of breaths before grabbing a bottle of water and heading back over to the bed.

Eddie had sat back down on the bed and was currently playing with a fray in the shirt. Richie tried not to notice how with Eddie playing with the fabric it pulled the shirt up higher and showed off more of Eddie’s thighs, he really did.

Eddie looked up at him as he walked up to the bed and held out the bottle. As soon as Eddie took the water Richie turned to go to the couch but was stopped by a tug on his arm. Eddie had dropped the water on the bed and stood, holding onto Richie’s arm with both hands.

“Eddie no.” Richie almost begged. He honestly didn’t think he would be able to stop himself. Eddie took a slow step towards him, his eye’s never leaving Richie’s

“Just a kiss. please.” Eddie asked in a quiet voice, taking another step. He was right in front of Richie now, who had turned back to face Eddie.

“Ed-“

“Please.”

Eddie whispered as he leaned in to press his lips to Richie’s.

Richie hesitated for a second before lightly pressing back. He felt another tug on his arm as Eddie slowly sat back down on the bed, pulling Richie with him.

Richie hesitated for another second before sitting down on the bed beside Eddie.

Eddie had moved his hands from Richie’s arm up to touch his face. Richie kept his hands to himself, not trusting himself with not wanting to take things further if he touched.

When Eddie’s hands started moving down Richie’s neck is when Richie stood from the bed. Eddie kept their lips together as long as he could as Richie moved. He didn’t go very far. although he was now standing, he was bent over so that his forehead was touching Eddie’s.

“I’m sleeping on the couch. Drink your water and go to sleep.” Richie whispered, pressing a light kiss to Eddie’s lips before pulling away and going to stand. Eddie’s hand stuck out and grabbed Richie’s arm again.

“Please don’t go. I’ll be good. I won’t try anything.” Eddie spoke quickly, almost desperately. Richie turned to look over his shoulder at the couch and then back down at the extremely cute drunk boy currently sitting on his bed half naked.

When had this become his life?

He sighed and gestured towards the other side of the bed with his head.

“Okay, fine. Move over.” Eddie smiled up at him and scooted across the bed, still holding onto Richie’s arm. Richie was half dragged down. He laughed as Eddie single handily maneuvered them so Richie was on his back with his arm around Eddie and Eddie was snuggled up to Richie’s side with his head resting on him.

Richie listened to the sound of Eddie breathing, trying to determine once he was asleep.

Once he was pretty sure he was sleep, he sat his head up and pressed a soft kiss to the top of Eddie’s head and pulled him tighter to his side.

“Thanks, Richie.” Eddie mumbled, half asleep into Richie’s chest.


	13. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And it begins.

Richie wasn’t sure what had woken him up the next day. It was either the light streaming in from the window, the uncomfortably stiff jeans that he was still wearing from the night before, or the almost alarmingly warm body pressed against him.  

On most days he found it difficult to pull himself from his bed, that difficulty seemed to double with Eddie snuggled up as physically close as he could be.

Some time during the night Richie had rolled from his back onto his side and was currently facing the younger boy, who had somehow pulled one of Richie’s hand under his cheek while they slept.

Richie remembered that he had a class sometime that morning, but before he forced himself to actually get out of bed he took some time to take in Eddie’s sleeping face.

Unlike how Eddie looked when he was awake, at least when he was around Richie, he looked extremely innocent. The light that shone in from behind Richie made Eddie’s tan skin almost glow. It also emphasized the length of his eyelashes, which Richie had never really paid all that much attention to, but realized he really should have been.

Eddie really was beautiful. 

The more he looked at him, the more Richie just wanted to lean over and kiss him. But not wanting to wake him up, Richie instead started trying to extract his hand from under Eddie’s cheek without moving him too much.

After about ten minutes of slowly wiggling his hand, he finally freed himself. Eddie made a displeased noise and then reached up and grabbed the pillow he was laying on and pulled it half over his face.

Richie smiled down at him as he stood from the bed, still being careful not to make any unnecessary sounds. He checked the time first.

8:36

Perfect, they didn’t have to be at the school for another hour. Richie grabbed a new pair of jeans and an old hoodie and quickly changed in the bathroom. it was kinda weird changing in the bathroom of his own apartment, changing in front of Eddie, sleeping or not, seemed even weirder. After he was dress he grabbed his keys and wallet and silently left the apartment.

He needed coffee to function, and after the night Eddie had had, he was pretty sure he could also use some.

The café across the street from Richie’s place was busier than usual and it took almost twice as long for Richie to get his order. He and Eddie had never really talked about coffee orders so he just got him a medium black coffee that he could add stuff to.

Richie checked his phone for the time as he crossed the street back to his place.

8:58

He usually tried to be on his way to the university by around 9:10ish, so today was probably going to be a little off schedule.

Stacking the drinks, Richie carefully unlocked and opened the door to his place, still trying to be quiet in case Eddie still hadn’t woken up.

When Richie poked his head around the corner towards the bed, he could see that Eddie had in fact gotten up and was currently sitting in the middle of Richie’s bed, looking around the room, looking pretty disoriented and disheveled. Richie couldn’t help but laugh at the contrasting looks of sleeping Eddie and angry and awake Eddie.

Eddie seemed to focus on him at the sound of his laugh. he tilted his head slightly sideways and blinked over at him, almost like an owl.

“Morning.” Richie moved more into the room, holding the coffee out in front of him, like it was some kind of offering. Eddie hummed a response and pushed the blanket away from himself, swinging his legs off the bed.

Richie couldn’t stop his eyes from dropping down to Eddie’s legs, the shirt that he had lent him the night before was hiked up high on his thighs, putting all of his legs on display. Richie put Eddie’s drink down on the table he had against the wall and leaned beside it, taking a decently long sip of his own to distract himself.

Eddie placed both hands on the bed and started to push himself up. he got about halfway up, stopped and didn’t move for a few seconds before flopping back down on the bed and throwing his arm over his face.

“What happened yesterday?” He mumbled into his arm. Richie pushed away from the wall and sat down beside Eddie on the bed.

“Well, you called me at around midnight completely shit-faced saying you missed me, so I came and got you and you slept over here. You’re very clinging when you’re asleep, did you know that. Like a baby koala.” Richie laughed down at him when Eddie glared from under his arm. He reached down and ran his fingers through Eddie’s sleep messed hair.

“C’mon, you’ve got class in half an hour.” Richie leaned over and grabbed Eddie’s coffee from the table, holding it out for Eddie to take.

Eddie went quiet, and Richie wasn’t sure if it was the hangover or something else.

“I can’t go.” Eddie dropped his arm to his side and looked up at Richie wearing the same look he had on when he was in Richie’s office the day before.

“Does this have to do with whatever happened yesterday?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“No.”

Richie sighed and stood from the bed, he pulled Eddie up into a sitting position by his arm. Once Eddie was sitting up, he placed the coffee in his hands and turned from the bed to his closet. He could feel Eddie watching him as he shifted through the shirt hung up there.

“I guess I can talk to your prof, make up some story about why you’re not in class.” Richie grabbed a shirt from the closet and turn back towards Eddie. He was smiling up at him.

“Be careful. He can be a bit of a hardass sometimes.” Richie joined in on the smile. He put his cup down and quickly tugged his sweater off, mindful of Eddie’s unfaltering stare as he did so. He pulled on the new shirt and moved over to the kitchen. He grabbed the spare metal key that hung on the wall and walked back over to the bed.

“Here. Stay as long as you want, just lock up if you leave. I’ll be back around 12ish if you want to wait for me.” Richie explained as he walked around the room, tossing the key to Eddie, grabbing a jacket from the closet and searching around for his bag.

Eddie had caught the key and was sitting in Richie’s bed, staring down at it.

“You’re giving me a key to your place?” He asked, looking up from the key towards Richie, who had found his bag wedged almost under the couch. Richie pulled it out and turned to look at Eddie.

Eddie had somehow throughout the course of the morning gone from looking like a sleeping angel, to a grumpy person to an absolute devil with the face he was currently pulling. It was almost like Richie could see the gears turning in his brain.

Richie crossed the room and leaned down, closing Eddie’s hand with the key in it as he pressed his lips to Eddie’s.

“Temporarily. Don’t steal anything.” Richie smirked as he pulled away and headed towards the front door, waving over his head as he walked.

~~~

The whole drive to the university Richie’s thoughts were on Eddie. Mostly about how whatever was going on with him could affect going to class or not. Other then when Richie had brought it up he had seemed to be fine, well as fine as he could be with the amount he had drank the night before.

Richie got to the school a little later than usual, but somehow he still got to class before 9:30.

He entered the room, and for some reason immediately looked towards the middle of the room.

Bill had sat up straighter in his chair as soon as Richie had walked in. He moved his head, as if he was trying to look around Richie into the hallway. Richie stopped for a second before continuing across the room.

Richie sat at his desk but kept an eye on Bill. Something seemed off with him as well. He would stare down at his phone, snap up to look towards the door every time someone would open it and then slouch back into his seat.

As the start of class rolled around, Richie started getting everything ready. It was a group discussion day so there wasn’t really all that much that he needed to do, basically, it was just setting up the projector.

The students got into their groups and class started as it usually did.

Richie pulled some papers that he hadn’t handed out the last class and started going through them, making sure he had grabbed the right ones. His attention was pulled from the papers when someone stepped up to his desk.

“Um, Mr.T-T?” Bill stood on the other side of Richie’s desk, clutching his phone in his hand. Richie put down the paper he was holding and looked up at him.

“Can I ta-talk to you about something?” He asked quietly, glancing over his shoulder at the rest of the students. Richie looked out at the other students as well, nodding when they turned back to each other. Bill shifted, rotating his phone in his hand.

“Um, can we ta-talk somewhere else … it’s about E-Eddie.” He dropped his voice even lower. Richie noticed a few of the students that were sitting closer to his desk had started to pay attention to the two of them. He turned back to Bill as he stood up.

“Can you stay after class?” He asked as he started walking back towards Bills seat, looking back to see if Bill was following him, which he was.

Bill nodded as he sat back down with his group. Richie stayed and listened for a few seconds before moving on to the next group and trying to go about the class like he normally would.

So whatever had happened must have had to do with Bill. That was the only reason Richie could think of that would cause Eddie to not want to come to class.

As much as Richie tried to act as normal as possible, he was pretty sure he was being noticeably less interactive with the students. His brain was just completely somewhere else.

The rest of the class went by like that and before Richie knew it, he was sitting at his desk collecting papers from the students.

The room emptied slower than usual, but between all the students headed towards the door, Richie could see that Bill had remained in his seat, staring straight at him.

As the last of the students filtered out, Richie stood from his desk, rounded it and sat back down on top of it. Bill stood also. He left his bag at his desk and closed the distance between them, stopping in front of Richie and crossing his arms. Richie could only describe the stare down he was currently receiving as intense.

“So first off, To-to get it out of the way, I kn-know about you and E-Eddie.”

Richie nodded in acknowledgment. He had figured as much.  

So he just wanted to jump straight into it then. That was probably best, Richie was hoping to get through whatever this conversation was going to be and then get back to his place for a bit before his next class.

“What happened yesterday. Something was definitely wrong with him.” If Bill wanted to be right to the point, then so did Richie.

Bill’s face softened as he uncrossed his arms. He didn’t say anything for a minute or so.

“He’s okay, right?” that intense look was completely gone and it was replaced with one of genuine concern. Richie took in the change in demeanor and sighed, nodding his head slowly. Bill seemed to somewhat relax at Richie’s response.

Again, he took another minute or so to start talking again.

“We got into a fight last night” Richie waited for some kind of elaboration but after a few minutes he didn’t know if he was going to get one.

“You guys fighting messed with him that bad? It must have been about something big.” Richie tried to probe more details. Bill shifted uncomfortably.  

“N-no. I th-think something happened with his mom t-to. He ran out of my place without really ta-talking t-to much. I tr-tried to run after him, but Eddie’s pr-pretty fast.” Bill sloughed back against the desk behind him as he spoke.

Richie also slumped into his desk a little more. Great, problems with his mom. From the little Richie knew about her, she seemed like an absolutely terrible person to be having problems with. 

At least he had a picture of what was going on now. it was a blurry picture but a picture none the less.

Richie pushed himself off of his desk.

“Okay. Is there anything else you wanted to talk about? I’m going to head home and talk to him.” Richie grabbed the stack of papers from his desk, watching Bill from the corner of his eye.

Bill opened his mouth like he was going to say something and then closed it and gave Richie a confused look.

“Eddie’s at your place?” He asked. Richie nodded trying to, as neatly as possible, quickly shove the stack of paper into his bag.

“His mom’s really not going to like th-that.” Bill said as he turned from Richie and walked back over to his seat.

Richie stopped messing around with his bag and faced Bill.

“Well I really hope he didn’t tell her where he was.”

“I don’t know. Eddie can be pr-pretty impulsive when he’s mad.”

Richie watched Bill pack for a second before quickly shoving the rest of the paper into his beg and hurrying across the room to the door.

“Mr. T-t.” Bill called right as Richie reached the door. Richie stopped and looked back over his shoulder.   
“Te-tell Eddie I’m sorry, please.”

Richie took one last look at Bill before nodding and leaving the room. He really needed to talk to Eddie as soon as possible.

Without stopping at his office to drop off his bag, Richie headed straight to his truck. He pulled out his phone as he walked and saw he had a few Snaps from Eddie.

He didn’t actually open any of them until he was in his truck.

The first was a picture Eddie had taken from the bed. It was of the corner of Richie’s living room area. It was basically the corner that Richie used for storage, so there were stacks and piles of book, papers, binders and a few other things.

‘Your place is a mess.’

The next was a selfie of Eddie laying in Richie’s bed. He was still wearing Richie’s old shirt and had a bunny filter on. In his weirdly neat handwriting, he had written the word bored along the top.

Richie shut his phone down and started up his truck, pulling out of the parking lot.

Was he worrying too much? Eddie seemed okay today, the fight with Bill could explain last night and Richie really wasn’t someone who could judge someone else for drinking away a problem, he had definitely done it more than a few times.

The only thing that he was really concerned about was whatever had happened between him and his mom. Eddie had told him that his mom had almost pulled him from school when he had come out.

The traffic on his way home was pretty bad. He usually didn’t go home in the middle of the day, and it took him a bit longer then he had thought it would to get back to his place.

When he actually did get back to his place he walked in on Eddie curled up on one of the corners of his couch, flipping through channels on the T.V.

“Finally.” He said as he sat up straighter on the couch. ‘’That class is so much longer when I’m not actually there.”

Richie laughed as he entered the apartment. Eddie looked like he had showered recently, his hair still slightly damp. Of course, he was still wearing the shirt with nothing else. Richie could see his bare knees sticking above the armrest of the couch.

“Missed me that much.” Richie joked as he closed the door behind him. 

He saw even more of Eddie’s legs when Eddie stood from the couch and faced him.

The night before Richie had felt bad about staring. but today there was no way Eddie had showered and changed back into ‘that’ without doing it on purpose.

Richie’s suspicions were confirmed when he saw the face Eddie was making. It was like his usual cocky smirk on steroids. He raised his eyebrow right as Richie noticed Eddie’s hand moving.

Richie dropped his eye’s back down to Eddie’s hand and saw that it was slowly scrunching up the material of the side of the shirt, causing the bottom hem to ride up even more.

Richie stared for another few seconds before dropping his bag down on the floor and striding across the room till he was right in front of Eddie.

Eddie opened his mouth to say something, but whatever he was going to say was replaced with a surprised noise as Richie wrapped his arms around Eddie’s waist and lifted him off the ground. The surprised sound morphed into a laugh as Richie held him in the air and started walking towards the bed, pressing kisses to the base of his neck or really anywhere else he could reach.

Somewhere between the short walk from where they had been standing to the bed, Eddie had wrapped his legs around Richie, trying to making the walk less work for him.

When they actually got to the bed, Richie’s plan had been to drop Eddie down. but he didn’t really account for Eddie’s holding on, so when Richie went to drop him, Eddie pulled him down as well.

They landed and the laughter that had been coming from Eddie stopped. Eddie’s legs had unwrapped in the fall, but Richie had fallen right in between them. In an attempt to not completely crush Eddie, Richie had dropped his elbows on either side of Eddie’s head. The somewhat joking air was replaced by the unspoken words being exchanged between the two.

Richie was the first one to make a move, dropping his head to take Eddie’s lips with his. Eddie very eagerly pressed back. Raising his arms up, he grabbed onto the sides of Richie’s shirt and pulled him down harder onto him.

Richie shifted, trying to somewhat separate them. this wasn’t really what he had planned to do when he got here. He had actually wanted to just talk to Eddie. but the way he looked in his old shirt really did things to him.

The shifting had almost the complete opposite effect that Richie had been going for. He had accidentally rubbed up against Eddie, pulling a high pitched breathy moan from the younger boy.

Richie pulled away and looked down at Eddie. His cheeks were red and his breathing was definitely picking up. Eddie went to say something but again Richie stopped him, this time by purposely pressing down against him.

Eddie’s eye’s slipped shut as he made that same sound, his fingers digging into Richie’s sides.

Holy fuck.

Richie’s brain felt like it was short-circuiting. His new resolve at the moment was to pull as many of those sounds out of Eddie as he could.

He started by lightly pressing his lips to the corners of Eddie’s mouth, making his way lower. Cheeks, chin, neck, collarbone. All while Eddie lightly squirmed under him.

As much as Richie loved the way Eddie looked in the shirt, it was currently very much in his way.

Richie pushed himself away from both the bed and Eddie, up onto his knees. Eddie had opened his eye’s and was watching Richie as he grabbed his waist and scooted down the bed pulling Eddie along with him.

Eddie watched Richie, slightly confused until he saw Richie slid off the bed and onto his knees beside it. He kept pulling Eddie until his feet touched the ground. 

Eddie went to sit up but Richie’s hand on his stomach stopped him.

He lifted his head up to watch as Richie ran his hands from his waist, over his hips to just below the hem of the shirt. Richie let his fingertips brush just under the shirt, dropping his head down to kiss Eddie’s inner thigh, just above his knee.

Richie heard Eddie’s head fall back against the bed but his focus was entirely on the ever-growing amount of skin on display as he slowly dragged his hand higher up Eddie’s leg.

“Richie.” Eddie whined, his squirming increasing the slower Richie’s hand moved. Richie looked up at him. his head was back against the bed with his eye’s closed again. Since he couldn’t reach Richie to touch him, he had one hand gripping the bed and the other scrunching up the material of the shirt around the neck.

With both hands flat on either side of Eddie’s hips, Richie pushed the hem of the shirt up above his bellybutton. Eddie made that surprised noise again as Richie moved his head up to mouth across Eddie’s stomach.

As he pressed his lips to various spots on Eddie’s stomach, his hands lowered back down to hook into the waistband of Eddie’s underwear.

The soft sounds that Richie was trying so hard to get Eddie to make were starting to come more often. Richie would feel Eddie’s legs start to tighten around him as he started to push his underwear down.

“Eddie?” Richie mumbled against Eddie’s tummy. Eddie slowly lifted his head back up, his eyelids heavy as he stared down at Richie.

Richie tugged lightly on Eddie’s underwear. He tugged again, this time Eddie lifted his hips up off of the bed as Richie slid them down his legs.

Eddie’s head didn’t fall back this time and he watched as Richie took him in his mouth. Eddie let out a heavy breath, his grip on his shirt tightening as Richie worked his way lower. It wasn’t until he was about halfway down that Eddie started making those cute little moans that Richie was going for.

Using his hands to keep Eddie flat down on the bed, Richie took as much of him into his mouth as he could, making sure to pay attention to how he was reacting to everything.

Richie quickly set up a slow teasing pace, which Eddie not so quietly protested. His hand had moved from the bed down to run through Richie’s hair, tugging on it as some kind of sign to go faster.

Richie kept up the teasing pace for a little while longer before giving into what Eddie wanted and speeding up.

When Richie started using his tongue as well, Eddie’s grip tightened in his hair.

It didn’t take long until Eddie’s moans were almost constant and the part of hair that he had a hold on was starting to hurt from how hard he was gripping it.

Eddie was whimpering something but Richie was too focused on pushing him over the edge to listen to closely.

His goal was accomplished when Eddie let out a high pitched cry and lifted off the bed slightly. Richie felt cum hit the back of his throat but didn’t move until Eddie had dropped back down onto the bed clumsily.

Richie swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he stood, his knee’s protesting. Eddie slowly sat up, his hand shaking as he reached up and grabbed the front of Richie’s shirt.

Richie smiled as Eddie dragged him down and pressed their lips together. He pulled away when Eddie started trying to get him onto the bed. Richie took a step back, running his hands over the front of his shirt to try to smooth it out.

“Where are you going?” Eddie asked, staring up at Richie confused.

“Work. I have a class in like 15 minutes.” Richie replied, stepping back up to the bed, leaning down and kissing Eddie again.

“Wait for me again?” Richie asked as their lips separated. Eddie smirked up at him.

“Well yeah. I have to repay you somehow.” Richie laughed and nodded as he moved away from the bed and grabbed his bag from beside the couch and headed back out the front door.


	14. Chapter 12.5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's time for another Eddie chapter.

Eddie was usually better at handling rejection. It didn’t really happen very often, but when it did he was usually better then this. It was just a stupid thing he had for one of his teachers, it shouldn’t hurt so much to think about.

Maybe it was the fact that Mr. T hadn’t said no because he didn’t like Eddie or anything, it was because he was already seeing someone. Eddie was pretty sure if it had been a feelings thing he wouldn’t have been so torn up about it, but he was sure that there was a mutual attraction between them.

Eddie went though his classes the next day barely paying attention to what was being taught. He just wrote down the words, not absorbing any of the information.

Bill was also quiet the next day, very few words being spoken between them. He seemed to be deep in thought whenever Eddie would see him, looking at his phone or just staring into space.

Eddie went straight home after school that Tuesday. Ignoring his mother as he walked to his room and locked himself in, intent on working on an essay he had to do to distract from thinking about going to film studies the next day.

He knew he was going to have to. He hated skipping classes and he wasn’t going to be petty and avoid he teacher because he had rejected him.

~~~

He was completely right about the class sucking. In an attempt to see Mr. T as little as possible, instead of getting to class early like he normally did, he waited until it was just about to start to slide into his spot beside Bill.

Apparently it didn’t matter that he had come right before 9:30. Mr. T wasn’t at the front of the room, and by some of the things that the students around him were saying, he hadn’t shown up at all yet.

“I wonder where he is.” Bill mumbled into his hand. Eddie shifted his eyes to look at Bill, who was watching him closely. Unlike the day before where Bill was clearly thinking about other things, today his full attention was on Eddie.

Eddie dropped his eye’s back to his desk and picked at the corner of his binder.

“No clue.” He spoke down at his desk. Silence passed between them, but Eddie could still feel Bill watching him and it was starting to weird him out.

“Hey Eddie.” Bill mumbled again, slightly quieter then last time. Eddie turned to face him right as the door was slammed open.

Mr. T came flying into the room, looking like he was just woken up. His shirt looked like it had been hurriedly thrown on and he had some serious sex hair going on. Eddie couldn’t help but stare as he crossed the room.

When he was about half was across, Eddie noticed Mr. T was looking at him from the corner of his eye as he past. Eddie quickly dropped his head to face his desk. A few conflicting thoughts running though his head.

Firstly, he looked really good like that. Eddie’s mind immediately went to this would be what he would look like just waking up in the morning. Which lead to him imagining doing stuff with him the night before.

His second thought cut the first right in half.

What if he was late and looked like that because he was spending the night with Mr. Uris.

Eddie stared down at his desk harder, and basically kept his head there for the rest of the class. Eddie only caught parts of the movie that he was supposed to be watching.

Eddie didn’t even realize that the movie was over until the lights were being flicked on. As soon as they were on Eddie stood from his chair, grabbing his things as he did and headed for the door, not turning around to see if Bill was following.

Without stopping outside of the room, Eddie kept walking down the hallway. His charge out of the arts building was stopped by a hand grabbing his arm.

Bill tugged him by his arm until he was stopped and facing him.

“Jeez, Eddie, sl-slow down.” Bill was still pulling on his backpack. Eddie shrugged off his hand.

“Sorry, I just didn’t want to be in there anymore.” Eddie turned from Bill and started walking, slower this time. Bill stayed a step behind him until they were out of the building and onto the campus.

“I’m going to head to the library if you want to come.” Bill asked as he sped up a bit to walk beside Eddie. Eddie shrugged and held onto the straps of his bag.

“Sure, I still have a few things to finish for my Bio research paper.” He muttered, more to himself then to Bill.

The whole time they were at the library, Eddie could swear that Bill was watching him like he had at the beginning of class. When ever Eddie would look up from his computer Bill was looking over the top of his book at him. Eddie knew the look he was giving him was the one he used when he wanted to say something but didn’t know how to say it.

Usually when Bill got that look it was best to either try to figure out what he was trying to say on his own or wait for Bill to work out exactly how he wanted to say it.

Eddie didn’t feel like trying to figure out what it was that Bill wanted to tell him, so he mostly just ignored him. Putting all of his thoughts on his school work.

After about an hour of working on his paper and ignoring Bill, Eddie packed up and decided to go for a run before his next class. Bill’s weirdness was making it to hard to focus anyways.

Eddie loved running. It was one of the little things that he had started doing as a protest against his mom. She was always worried that he was going to hurt himself or collapse or get kidnapped when out on a running trail.

Eddie had started in his later years of high school and the hobby had continued though collage.

~~~

The run cleared his head enough to actually focus on his two other classes, and Eddie headed home that day actually feeling like he had been productive.

That productivity continued to the next day and Eddie somehow effectively distracted himself enough that he barely thought about Mr. T or Mr. Uris until Friday when he had to sit though film studies again.

Eddie tried to get through as much of the class as he could without looking at Mr. T. He had thought about it a little bit the night before and maybe the reason he felt so shitty about the whole situation was because he had almost come between two people in a relationship.

Eddie was not down for being ‘that guy’. His new goal was to give Mr. T as much space as possible, even if it really wasn’t what he wanted to do.

~~~  
As the weekend rolled around, Eddie had resigned to spending most of it at home, cope up in his room. Bill was still acting strange and unless he was going to be normal or he decided to tell Eddie whatever it was that he was trying to tell him, he didn’t really want to hang out with him to much.

After Friday night and half way though Saturday, Eddie got sick of his room and ventured downstairs for a change of scenery. Sonia was thrilled that Eddie was staying home for the weekend. She would sit across from him at the dinner table as he worked and talked about how this was how her little boy should be spending every weekend, and the woman from her book club.

Eddie mostly just blocked her out, especially when she would talk about the neighborhood gossip. He really didn’t care about a bunch of ‘Scandalizes’ things that his mom and her snooty friends talked about.

Sunday wasn’t any more exciting and by the time Sunday night rolled around, Eddie was looking forward to going to class. Even if it was film studies and he had to try to simultaneously pay attention to and ignore the teacher.  

~~~

The class was about as fun as he thought it was going to be. It was a lecture day so the whole time Eddie had to listen to Mr. T talking and focus on the words he was saying and not his voice, and other things that he could be saying to him.  

Eddie left the class similarly to how he had the week before, quickly and without waiting for Bill.

Bill caught up to him and silently followed.

Eddie showed up for class on Wednesday completely done. He knew he was going to hate his class when he was sighing up for it, but he had thought he had found a way to get though it having some fun at least. Without that, this class was quickly turning into the worst one he had taken in his three years of school.

Eddie wasn’t really a big movie person so having to sit there and actually watch the movie without having anything else to distract himself with was extremely boring.

About half way thought the class Bill leaned over in his chair.

“I wanna talk to you after class.” He whispered quickly before moving back behind his desk. Eddie looked his way and gave him a small nod and then turned to half pay attention to the film.

So Bill had finally work out what he wanted to say. Eddie’s thoughts drifted from the movie to what he could have to say. By the end of the class Eddie again, didn’t realize the movie was over until the lights were being turned on.

Intent on dashing out like he had recently been doing, as Eddie went to stand from his seat, the figure of Mr. T standing in front of his desk, stopped him.

“I want to talk to you after class.”

Eddie noticed Bill staring over as Mr. T turned and headed back towards the door. Bill immediately turned in his chair and faced Eddie, his eye brows raised in surprise.

“Should I stay?” Eddie’s face mirrored Bill’s, until Bill’s changed into one of concern.

“I don’t know Eds. Are you going to be okay?” Bill asked worriedly. Eddie looked over Bills shoulder towards the door, where Mr. T was smiling at students as they left. He turned back to Bill and nodded slowly.

The concerned look stayed on Bill’s face as he stood and headed towards the door. Eddie watched as he left, the door being closed behind him, leaving him and Mr. T in the room alone.

~~~

Eddie had been right! There had been something between them and the feelings were mutual, and they had kissed, and Mr. T had kissed back, and Eddie was still slightly freaking out about the whole thing.

There was no way Eddie was going to just drop the fact that he had lied about being single but as of that minute Eddie was just concerned with the fact that not only did Mr. T like him, he also was okay with exploring whatever it was that Eddie thought was between them.

When Friday rolled around, a small part of Eddie’s brain was yelling that Mr. T had changed his mind and would want nothing to do with him.

That voice was shut down when Eddie walked into the film studies room and caught Mr. T blatantly checking him out. He had ‘coincidently’ wore his favourite short shorts that day.

~~~

Any doubt that Eddie had was gone by the time he ended up leaving the class room.

Not only had they made out on Mr. T’s desk. Eddie had also given him his number. (and basically told him he was going to send him a dirty picture that night but Eddie was going to deal with that part later.)

Mr. T’s words echoed in his head as he walked towards the library. He had said that Eddie had his attention, which on it own, Eddie didn’t think he would have thought to hard about. He’d had the attention of quite a few guys. It had been the way he had said it, and the way he had looked at Eddie when he did.

He set up a little spot in the library and pretended to work on a lab report while replaying everything that had happened over and over in his head.

A ding from his pocket eventually broke him out of his day dream. He quickly pulled his phone out, returning the dirty look the girl that sat across from him was shooting his way. He switched the phone to silent and opened messenger. It was a text from Bill asking if he wanted to come over that night and help him with a report.

Eddie send back a ‘sure’. As good as Bill was at writing and anything creative he was kinda dumb when it came to sciences. Eddie put his phone down on the table and decided to actually work for a bit, he could think about Mr. T tonight when he got home from Bill’s.

About 30 minutes into working his phone lit up again. Just assuming it was Bill again Eddie was somewhat surprised when an unknown number popped up on his phone.

_‘Hey It’s Richie’_

Eddie hadn’t really put to much thought into what Mr. T’s first name was. Richie really suited him.

Richie huh.

~~~

The amount of talking that the two of them did following Richie’s drunk night really surprised Eddie. Maybe it was because he had somewhat just expected this to turn into a one time hook up. or maybe it was because the more they talked the more Eddie realized that he actually might really like this guy, even if they hadn’t taken their relationship further then some make out sessions in Richie’s office.

It was a Thursday day night and Eddie had a book opened in front of him on the dinning room table. It had been a couple of weeks since they had started actually talking and in those few weeks Eddies schedule had basically consisted of studying, occasionally hanging at Bill’s, going to class, and Richie.

If he wasn’t at Richie’s office helping him mark or doing ‘other’ things, he was in his room sending him flirty snapchats. A personal rule of his was to try to never text anyone around his mom, especially guys he was interested in. It just lead to questions that he didn’t really feel like thinking of a lie for.

With all the phone time recently, he had barely seen his mom. Which normally wasn’t a bad thing, but Eddie did find him self feeling guilty if he didn’t at least spend some time with her occasionally. He was pretty sure it was a subconscious thing she had implanted in him when he was young.

Currently, Sonia was sitting across from him, talking on the phone with one of her friends, Eddie didn’t really keep track of them.

Eddie barely paid attention to his mom as he read. It seemed that whoever she was talking to was doing most of the talking with Sonia occasionally gasping at what was being said and making a disgusted face.

It went on like that for about a half an hour. Eddie had noticed that about half way through that, Sonia had started to glance across the table at him, that same disgusted look mixed with the look she always had on when she was worried about him.

Eddie usually gave zero shits about the gossip between his mom and her friends but it seemed that whatever they were talking about had something to do with him.

His focus shifted from his book to the phone, trying to make out at least some of the words being said to his mom.

By the time she was hanging up the phone Eddie still had no clue what they had been talking about, but he had concluded that whatever it was about ,it definitely had something to do with him.

Sonia stood from the table and crossed the kitchen, placing the phone on the cradle. As soon as the phone was down she turned to face Eddie and started pacing.

“I knew that boy was a bad influence.” She gestured wildly with her hands, talking mostly to herself. Eddie pushed himself away from the table and turned in his seat to face her.

“What’s going on mom?”

she continued pacing in front of the sink, wringing her hands together and looking worriedly over at him occasionally.

“I should have been stricter when it came to him. Who knows what kind of things he’s been trying to get my little boy to do.” Eddie cautiously stood from the table.

“Who? What are you talking about?” Eddie asked again, trying to get any more information other then the babbling his mom was currently doing. Sonia stopped pacing and turn her head towards him.

“That boy, that Denbrough boy.” She spit out his name, almost like it was a dirty word. Eddie recoiled. That hadn’t really been who he was expecting this to all be about.

There were very very few people that Eddie would challenge him mom over, Bill was at the top of that list.

“Who was that on the phone. What were they saying about Bill?” Eddie stayed on the other side of the kitchen, glaring over at the phone like whoever had just been on the other line could see him.

“That was Ms. Baker from down the street. She was at the library today and she saw that boy there, and he was holding hand with some older man.” She gaged on a few of the words, as if they physically made her sick to say. She shivered before taking a step towards him.

“I always knew that he was one of ‘them’ and I let you be around that for so many years. No wonder you were confused.” She reached her hand up to his cheek, but he shifted out of her reach.

She was momentarily thrown by him moving but quickly turned and went back to pacing across the kitchen. Eddie just watched her, keeping his face as blank as he could.

“You’re never going over to that house again, do you understand. I should have stuck to it when you were recovering from your sickness.” She shook her head, pausing to stare him down to make sure he had heard him.

“You can’t do that.” Eddie said softly, unintentionally. He cursed at himself when he realized what he had said. If he just got through this conversation without setting his mom off anymore then she already was then he could either wait till she had calmed down or find some way around her rules.

Eddie was hoping that maybe she hadn’t heard him but quickly saw that she had.

Sonia’s head snapped around. Her eye’s lit up and wide.

“Excuse me? I am your mother and you Will do what I say.” Her voice was steady, but Eddie could hear the rage just beneath the surface. “And I’m saying you can’t see that boy anymore.”

Eddie slammed his hand down on the table, surprising both him and his Sonia.

“Don’t talk about him like that. and stop telling me what to do.” He yelled, storming past her towards the front door. 

“Where do you think you’re going?” she called as she followed him through the hallway, reaching out to try to grab his arms as he sped away.

“Out” Eddie yelled over his shoulder. He grabbed a pair of shoes and his jacket and as soon as he was outside, without putting either on, broke into a sprint down the street.

Well that wasn’t how he had planned for that to go. He slowed down a couple blocks from his house, pulling his shoes on. He looked behind him a few times even though he knew his mother wouldn’t have followed.  

He stared back towards his house one last time before starting the walk towards the university.

He could have jumped on a bus if he really wanted to be he needed to think and figure things out and when he was moving was when he did that the best.

So according to his moms nosy friend, Bill was seeing some one…someone who was a guy…and older… Huh.

In a passing comment when they were still in high school, Bill had mentioned that he thought a couple of the guys in there grade were cute. But other then that, Bill’s sexuality wasn’t really something they had ever talked about.

Eddie stopped walking.

Did he not trust him enough to talk about something like that?

Eddie shook his head and kept walk, slightly faster this time.

There had to be a reason that Bill hadn’t told him about this, Eddie just couldn’t think of any at the moment.

By the time Eddie was outside Bill’s place he had a variety of emotions running through his head.

Sad, confused,

He passed by a couple of girls standing in the hallway talking, their voices dropped as he passed.

Scared, angry.

The last emotion took control as he knocked way louder then he needed to on Bill’s door. The girls from down the hall glared at him, he returned the look.

“Eddie?”

Eddie turned back towards the door, which was now open with Bill standing in the middle.

“What’s up?” He asked, cocking his head to the side. Eddie knew he shouldn’t necessarily be mad at Bill, but he couldn’t help it. He was still so worked up from fighting with his mom.

“I don’t know Bill, why don’t you tell me what’s up. Because obviously I don’t know anything.”

The confusion didn’t leave Bill’s face as he stuck his hand out of the door and put it on Eddie’s arm.

“Come inside and we can ta-talk about whatever thi-this is.” He pulled lightly on Eddie’s arm but Eddie pulled it from his grasp.

“How long have you been seeing someone? It was super awesome finding out from my mom by the way.” Eddie could see the color drain from Bill’s face.

“Wha-what?”

“Yeah, someone saw you with some older guy. I get it if you weren’t ready to come out publicly but how shitty of a friend am I that you felt you couldn’t tell me.” Eddie knew he was being an asshole. But when he was as mad as he was he didn’t really have the greatest filter.

The girls down the hall had gone completely silent, shamelessly watching the interaction between the two.

“Ed-eddie, its…complicated. Can we t-t-talk about this inside plea-ase.”

“Why, what’s so complicated about it.”

It was almost like a staring contest between the two, both waiting for the other to back down.

Bill sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Be-because, He’s older, and kind of a professor.” Bill voice dropped off into a whisper. He was looking down at his feet so he completely missed the look of shock that passed by Eddie’s face.

Without saying anything else Eddie turned from Bill and took off down the hallway. Past the two girls who he could hear vigorously whispering things to each other. He heard Bill call after him, but he didn’t stop.

He was a terrible friend.

Whatever he had just basically forced Bill into sharing was obviously something he wasn’t really to tell him. A serious conversation was definitely needed between the two and in the current state Eddie was in, he didn’t think he was capable of having that right now.

He didn’t stop running until he had to too catch his breath. He looked around, not really sure where he had ended up. he was definitely still on campus. Looking around to see if he recognized any of the builds around he, he realized he was right in the middle of the arts buildings.

Instinctively he turned towards Richie’s building. He could see the window into his office from where he was and the sudden hope that he was in there that filled Eddie was staggering. He hadn’t really though about Richie all day but as soon as he entered his thoughts, he was the only person Eddie really wanted to talk to right now.

~~~

He should have known not to bug Richie, he had his own life to deal with, he didn’t need Eddie’s shit as well.

Eddie had hurried out of the office as quickly as he could, heading straight towards the stairs with the briefest wave to Richie’s little sister. He stopped and leaned on the side of the building once he was outside.

Where was he supposed to go now?

Home was definitely not an option. He was to embarrassed to go back to Bill’s. he had a few other somewhat friends, but none that he would be comfortable enough with to just show up at their place.

He pushed away from the building and started on another mindless walk, letting his feet decide where he ended up.

He wasn’t sure if he had been walking for ten minutes or two hours but he knew he was cold by the time he stopped. So cold that the dingy looking bar he had stopped in front of actually look somewhat welcoming.

Eddie usually wasn’t the type to drink much in general, but with how the night had been going so far, maybe downing a few drinks would help.

A few drinks turned into a few more and before Eddie knew it he was leaning against a bar inside a dimly lit room, completely hammered.

He was pretty sure someone was talking to him. He wasn’t sure what they were saying. The smell of smoke coming off of the person reminded him of Richie. Not even acknowledging the person that was trying to talk to him, Eddie pulled his phone out and scrolled through his contact until he reached the letter R.  


	15. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well hello there, it's been awhile huh.

Richie slammed his head down on the top of his steering wheel. He didn’t think he’d ever been this tempted to cancel a class last minute, and the image of Eddie laying under him in bed was so enticing.

But he was supposed to be a responsible adult and responsible adults didn’t skip work to mess around with their … whatever Eddie was to him. Plus he had looked so cool leaving the apartment like he had. he felt like the badass love interest in a rom-com.

Unfortunately, his body didn’t understand that it wasn’t in that situation anymore. He put his truck in reverse as he adjusted the front of his pants.

So it turned out, coming home to ‘talk’ to Eddie hadn’t been his most well-executed plan. They hadn’t really done any talking at all, in fact, Richie was pretty sure that there had been less then ten words spoken between them the whole time.

At least he was pretty sure Eddie would still be there after work.

The thought of the two classes he had to teach combined with the inevitable talk that he wanted to have with Eddie helped take Richie’s mind off certain ‘pressing issues’, and by the time he had reached the university he had calmed down enough to actually stand in front of a class and teach.

He made sure to fix his hair as best as he could before getting out of the car. He was pretty sure his students would just write it off as Richie’s usually crazy curls being slightly more out of control than normal, but he knew Bev would have something to say about it if he ran into her.

His usually fastish afternoon seemed to drag on as the time till Richie could head back home came closer. Although it seemed to take forever the two classes did eventually go by and as soon as his last class was finished he dismissed the students and sped walked (Ran) to his truck.

Usually the drive home for Richie didn’t take to long, at least it didn’t feel like it took to long.  Of course, on most days there wasn’t a good-looking guy waiting for him at home. Self admittedly it had been a while since the last time Richie had gotten together with anyone. He was kind of surprised that the lunchtime event had gone so well.

Pulling into his parking spot, Richie looked up at the building to where light could faintly be seen in his window as he jumped out of his truck and headed towards the front entrance. Perfect. Eddie didn’t seem like the type to leave the light on if he had left in the time Richie had been gone, so he took it as a sign the younger man was still there.

He glanced at the older woman who lived on his floor sitting next to the elevator and quickly decided on the stairs. He breezed past her, nodding politely at her warm smile. Usually, he would stop and chat with her for a bit, but the thought didn’t even cross his mind as he pushed the door to the stairwell open.

Taking the stairs two at a time, Richie climbed to his floor in almost record time. He was down the hall and in front of his place in even less than that.

He took a second to catch his breath before pressing his key into the lock and walking In.

Expecting to see a similar scene as he had early that day, with Eddie curled up on the couch. A panic washed over him when instead of Eddie, he was greeted Sierra, fiddling with something in the kitchen that Richie couldn’t see.

“Hey” She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. She looked back down at what she was doing. “I was wondering when you were going to get back.”

Richie froze with his hand still on the handle for a second before shaking out of it and closing the door and cautiously walking more into the room.

“Yeah sorry, I should have texted you. how was Bev’s.” He asked as he leaned against one of the dining chairs pushed into the table. Seeing that her eyes were mostly focused on what she was cutting. He surveyed the rest of the room as discreetly as he could as she described how the night before had gone.

The bed had been fixed up from the last time Richie had seen it and the shirt that Eddie had borrowed was folded neatly on top of it. He sighed in relief and turned back towards her.

Eddie had probably left sometime before Sierra had gotten there, thank god. Richie could only imagine how awkward that could have been.

“-ome guy spilled a drink on me and Bev freaked on him, it was hilarious.” As he turned his attention back to her, he could see that she had been watching him from the corner of her eye. She smirked and looked back down, cutting herself off leaving a silence between them.

“Sorry for disappearing yesterday.” He apologized sincerely. Scooting closer to her to see if he could help with whatever she was preparing. She had various piles of chopped up vegetables spread across the counter. With a pot of something boiling on the stove.

He was going to ask where she had gotten all the vegetables from since he was pretty sure the only ones he had in his apartment was some frozen corn, when the three empty bowls laid out beside the stove caught his eye.

He was about to ask when his looked down at her and noticed she was already watching him with that same little smirk.

He would have slipped her some kind of questioning look when a click from across the room pulled his attention.

Eddie was bringing his phone down from his ear as he pushed the bathroom door open. He had changed back into the clothes he had been wearing the night before. The look of shock on his face echoed Richie’s for only a second before melting into a more amused expression.

“Hope you don’t mind, but I invited Eddie to stay for dinner. I was planning on making the soup mom used to make before you drove me to the airport and thought he might like to have some.” Sierra had turned from the counter and was staring up at Richie, her little smirk at grown into an all-knowing smile.

Richie’s eyes darted from his sister to Eddie a few times before shaking his head, rubbing the back of his neck with the palm of his hand.

“yeah, um, yeah, of course. Eddie could I talk to you in the hallway for a sec.” Richie stuttered out as he crossed the room. Without waiting for an answer he grabbed Eddie lightly by the arm and pulled him towards the front door.

“Dinner in like, 15 minutes so don’t take to long.” Sierra called as Richie flipped the door stop out and pulled Eddie into the hallway.

Richie stared hard down at the floor. doing a quick analysis of the situation, he came to the conclusion that sometime during the day his sister had walked in to find the guy he was messing around with at his place, possibly half naked. Oh boy this might take some maneuvering.

How long had they been alone? What had they talked about? The situation couldn’t have been any more scandalous. Trying to explain this in a believable yet non-sexual way was going to be impossible. 

“So how was the rest of work?” Eddie questioned smiling, after a few seconds of silence.

Richie looked up from the floor and couldn’t help but laugh at the genuine smile Eddie was shooting him. Eddie joined in and soon the two of them were laughing loudly in the middle of the hallway.

“Sorry, that was probably a pretty awkward scene. I should have told you she might be coming back.” Richie leaned back against the wall, giving Eddie a sympathetic look. If Eddie was dealing with this so well then maybe it hadn’t been as bad as Richie was picturing.

“Well it wasn’t the most awkward I’ve been in, but it wasn’t that great either. Your sisters seems pretty cool with the whole situation actually.” Eddie joined him against the wall. Richie hummed in agreeance. It was another few seconds before Richie spoke again.

“We’re pretty shit at being alone huh.”

“We’re technically alone right now.” Eddie countered. Subtly leaning his shoulder against Richie’s.

Richie raised his eye at the younger man.

“That’s a real small technicality.” Richie mused, even though he could feel himself pushing back against Eddie’s arm.

It took Richie approximately 2 seconds after looking down at Eddie before he was pressing their lips together.

Even though it had only been a few hours since they had kissed last, Richie felt like he had been looking forward to this moment all day. Eddie’s tongue licking out across Richie’s lip caused Richie to temporarily forget where the two of them were as he pushed from where he was leaning without breaking away and pressing Eddie more into the wall.

Eddie eagerly returned Richie’s now almost feverish kisses.

It wasn’t until someone loudly cleared their throat that the two pulled apart.

Richie looked over his shoulder expecting to find his sister smiling up at him teasingly. He was way past the point of caring and was going to tell her to mind her own business and go back inside. Only, she wasn’t there. Richie thought maybe he was just hearing things until he heard Eddie huff out a breath.

He turned around to see Eddie looking over his left shoulder. Richie followed the direction he was staring in to make eye contact with his elderly neighbor. She was shooting him a knowing look, a hint of entertainment behind the look.

Richie was just starting to realize that the two of them were somewhat blocking the hallway at the moment, and most people didn’t want to squeeze past a couple making out against a wall.

Richie opened his mouth to say something, He had no clue what exactly that was going to be, but he was cut off by a hand pushing on his chest.

“sorry ma’am” Eddie pushed again, leading Richie back towards his door. He kept pushing until Richie’s back hit the door, slowly opening it. Richie shot his arm out and waved before he disappeared as a kind of apology.

As soon as they were both in the apartment and Eddie had knocked the door stop out, he turned to face Richie and started laughing. Richie joined in seconds later.

“Perfect timing… what’s going on?” Sierra asked as she turned to the sounds of their laughing. It looked like she had just finished moving bowls and spoons to the table and was getting ready to move the large pot of soap over as well.

Richie took a step away from Eddie who had started to stop laughing and stood closer to his sister.

“Oh nothing, we just gave my neighbor a bit of a show.” He smiled as Eddie started laughing again. Ignoring the confused look she was still giving him, he bumped her aside and grabbed the handles of the pot.

~~~~

Dinner with his sister and Eddie turned out to not be as bad as he had imagined to would be. Actually, it had been a pretty good time. Sierra had teased Richie a few times, with Eddie either laughing at what was being said or joining in with her. And instead of Richie worrying about what was being said like he had been in the past when people he was seeing met his family, he found himself enjoying the back and forth and everything that they would talk about.

By the time they had all finished eating, Richie had finished cleaning everything up, (Eddie was a guest and ‘she had done all the cooking while Richie had dick around’ as Sierra had put it) and Eddie had helped Sierra pack up her two bags, Richie had felt like the night had flown by way to fast.

Richie was still in the kitchen while Sierra and Eddie sat on the floor closer to Richie’s bed with her bags in between them.

“Fuck, it's already 8?” Sierra exclaimed as she looked down at her phone as soon as she had pulled the zipper shut on one of her bags.

“language” Richie joked from the kitchen. “What times your flight at again?” he asked, walking up behind her and looking over her shoulder at the phone.

“8:50” she smiled sheepishly back up at him.

“Fuck”

He grabbed the closer bag from the floor and held his arm out towards the door.

“Okay, we gotta go, now. Wanna come for a ride Ed’s”

Eddie stayed where he was on the floor for a few seconds, staring up at Richie with an expression that Richie couldn’t quite read before nodding, standing and grabbing the other bag from the floor and walking past Richie to the door.

~~~~

With a combination of incredibly good luck with traffic and Richie’s crazy driving, they managed to make it to the airport right before Sierra’s flight. After a quick goodbye hug to both, she ran off into the main entrance of the building, leaving Richie and Eddie standing there.

“I like her.” Eddie declared as they made their way back to Richie’s truck.

“Yeah, she okay.” Richie responded, pulling the passenger door open for Eddie, who nodded, smiling as he ducked into the truck. Richie quickly rounded the front of the truck and slid into the driver’s seat.

“So where to?” Richie asked once he had started the truck up. Eddie rested his elbows on the dash, sinking his chin into his hands.

“Home I guess, I’ll have to go back eventually, and I might as well do it tonight.”

Richie nodded somberly as he switched the truck into drive. He glanced sideways through the corner of his eye as Eddie thudded back against his seat. A worried expression striking across Eddie's face.

“You know, you can always come to my place if things get bad again.” Richie offered, rotating between looking at the road and Eddie.

Eddie turned his head to stare at the side of Richie’s face. Richie took a second to turn from the road to flash Eddie a reassuring smile.

“Can I take you up on that offer right now?” Eddie asked quietly, tilting his chin down to give Richie an innocent look. The smile dropped from Richie’s face as he quickly turned back towards the front.

“Well, I mean, Sure. But what happened to ‘might as well be tonight?” Richie questioned, feeling his hands clutching the wheel tighter. There was no way Eddie wasn’t implying something, right?

“One more nights not going to hurt. Besides we have some unfinished business from earlier, remember.”

Boy did Richie remember. Without saying anything he nodded his head, making sure Eddie had seen it and then pressed his foot ever so slightly down harder on the gas peddle.


End file.
